An Angel's Duet
by michellemybelle25
Summary: After the Masquerade, as the cast prepares to perform the phantom's opera, Christine returns to her teacher for help.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own the characters; they are from various versions of the Phantom of the Opera.

Happy almost summer! I wanted to post a new story for everyone who has been so graciously reading my work, and I hope you enjoy it. I've had this particular idea in my head for years, really since the last time I saw the musical, and I finally wrote it last month. It's long, so I'm going to be posting it in parts over the next week. This particular story starts after the Masquerade and is based on the musical's timeline and events not the movie.

SUMMARY: After the Masquerade, as the cast prepares to perform the phantom's opera, Christine returns to her teacher for help.

"An Angel's Duet"

"This is a disgrace! Every ridiculous detail of this half-cocked plan is a mockery of our ability to stop this madman!" Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny, yelled in indignation as he tossed the heavy score to the monster's opera onto the desk in his study, wishing that a mere heave of its pages and melodies would be enough to destroy its every blasphemous note.

From her place idly staring out the window at a winter landscape and only partially aware of her raging fiancé, Christine slowly wandered to retrieve the undamaged book, lifting it between shaking hands and cradling it in trembling arms. How heavy it felt with a weight that far exuded paper and binding; no, it bore its own internal burden interwoven in every ill-begotten aria as if it could crush her simply by existing.

"Give in to his demands?" the Vicomte was continuing as he paced fitfully. "Perform his opera? Those damn managers must be as addled as he is to even consider such a thing! Ah yes, instead of going after the monster with guns and blades drawn, we'll be his little marionettes, sing his little songs, and pray to God the bastard makes an appearance so we can shoot at him in a theatre full of people! Pure genius! I can hardly believe that rational, _educated_ people can devise such ludicrousness! Truly, Christine, you should have listened to me six months ago when I said that we should leave this place after the first time we avoided his wrath. But you insisted we stay, and now look where it has gotten us!"

Six months ago, Christine silently pondered. Yes, six months ago when a chandelier had nearly come down upon her head. Intelligent people fled such situations, didn't they? Sought safety after such a trauma? But she…. No, she had refused every mention of leaving the city, …of leaving the opera. And when Erik had seemingly vanished from their lives, it could have been considered the right decision as it bore no consequences. But last night…. Well, all of that had changed in one fated appearance at the company's Masquerade Ball, and now…now six months didn't matter at all, not if they were right back where they had started.

Hugging the score to her chest, she forced her eyes to focus on the snow-covered trees beyond the terrace behind the de Chagny mansion, and yet their image was a blur of shimmering white and sunglow as her mind betrayed her to slip back within itself and find its own visions in its deepest recesses to dwell upon. The Masquerade, the Red Death, like a figure of a nightmare brought to life, drawing her to him with little more than an idle gesture, the memory of staring into mismatched eyes and finding the depth of their every emotion unchanged and ever so brilliant. For one brief instant, six months had not passed, had been wiped out of existence and lost from the course of always-moving time. One brief instant, and in the next, she had become more abhorred than every other person in the room. If a kiss on a rooftop six months before had been a betrayal, then a hidden engagement had been a stab wound to the gut.

"It isn't too late!" the Vicomte suddenly decided, attempting to capture Christine's attention, but she never turned from the window and its welcoming view of sunlight. "We can still leave. This afternoon, in fact. We'll get out of the country altogether, book passage on a ship, flee to the other end of the world if we must."

His adamant declarations finally burst into her meditation, and she jerked disagreeing eyes to his with a firm shake of her head. "That's…ridiculous, Raoul. We can't just run away."

"Why not? If I can't go and get the bastard with swords and violence on my side, leaving still seems a far better option than watching you play the bait and lure him into a volatile trap that may or may not work in the end. Perhaps I am the only one with sense left, considering how quickly your managers were apt to agree to his terms and concoct this plan of theirs, but at present, my primary concern is for you and your welfare. To hell with the opera! Let the bastard have his little temper tantrum and burn the place to the ground this time for all I care. If you are safe and beyond his grasp, what is the difference?"

"No," she replied as steadily as she could. She was desperate not to seem weak; if he presumed she could break, he would push, and she was terrified that she would give in. "If we left, Erik might hurt other innocent people, and I could never live with such guilt to know that I was the cause of it."

"Christine-"

"Raoul," she interrupted quickly, "I have to do this. But you will be there the night of the performance; you will protect me, and I see nothing worthy of worrying over. I trust you to keep me safe."

It was a bit of a ploy on her part; to give Raoul a task of his own and use his desire to always be the noble hero, but she knew that he wouldn't argue against it.

"Of course I'll keep you safe," he vowed, and she knew that she had won. Huffing his discontent, the Vicomte plopped down onto his chair and rubbed at weary temples. "I would keep you safe to my death, Christine; you know that, but I still feel it is an abomination to give in to this monster. I'm already certain he has his own agenda; there is no way that this is all just about performing an opera. No one would go to such dramatic extremes unless they were truly getting something invaluable out of it."

Christine had the urge to protest, but it seemed too exhausting to devise enough words to portray her point. It felt like a deliberate waste of breath. Raoul could never understand that to Erik, music _was_ worth such dramatics; he loved the music, maybe even more than he loved her. It was just that important to him.

The Vicomte was still muttering his tirade, but already knowing that the decision had been made and he would not be able to keep her from singing, Christine deafened herself to his rants. She was still holding her score in a semi-embrace, and her blue eyes were caught and fixed upon her name, scribbled so elegantly on the top corner. Her fingertip traced each and every letter distractedly, imagining it was the same as the ink pen that had created the perfect loops and curved lines, making a work of art out of the meager appellation that had been her own since her birth. Part of her wondered what thoughts had been in his head when he had written the word, when it had inevitably brought an image of her to life in his mind's eye attached to every consonant and vowel. Had it been scrawled with flames of still-thriving betrayal and hatred? But no, every ink stroke was seemingly delicate and graceful, not driven and forced as one would expect anger to create. All she saw as she stared transfixed at her own name was hope woven into every single mark. Hope…, and she couldn't say how she felt to realize with its consideration that he wanted her still; in spite of everything she had done to him, every pain caused, every selfish breaking of his heart in her hands, he wanted her, and the letters of a name she had known, written, seen all her life, suddenly only seemed to spell anticipation to her soul.

* * *

Dark, it was _always_ dark beneath the surface of the earth. It didn't matter if it was mid-afternoon or the middle of the night. One learned quickly not to judge time by the standard positioning of the sun; it was Erik's very first lesson when he had taken to the underground years and years ago, especially when he was so often the victim to gaps of empty minutes lost composing his music, altering his own internal clock's every attempted prediction. Never judge time by anything but the manmade clock itself. Glancing at its ticking face now, he noted that it was late into the evening, another day on the verge of ending, and he had spent it how: thinking, mourning, mentally raging, and more than a little bored in between each spike of emotion. For six months, he had lived as no more than the lifeless corpse they had always dubbed him, for truly, how could one be more than a corpse when one denied oneself the right to feel anything at all? No, the only emotions he had had to sustain himself were entwined in the score of his finished opera. He had poured the essence of every one into chordal structure and lyrical melody lines, feeling them only through reverberations in the ivory of piano keys like echoes that rattled a hollow cage. And for that blissfully saccharine span of time, he was almost numb to their true agony, as if they only existed in music's sphere with such intensity, never the real world. Of course, that had only lasted with a bitter brevity until the moment the final cadence had been written, and then in the instant his brain had strayed away from devising progressions and the notes had faded from his inner ear, it had all returned in a swell so great that it had taken his breath away. He had wanted to believe that it hadn't happened, that that wasn't his current reality and couldn't _be_ reality. But no, his life really _was_ that unfathomable nightmare, and he really _was_ alone; hope really was dead for him.

The anguish and resentment twisted within him once again, and he leaned back in his throne-like chair and forced his eyes to attempt to concentrate on dancing flames in the hearth instead, but their patterns were erratic and unpredictable and did not hypnotize his mind as he wanted. They could not block out an image of a face so utterly beautiful that it was too difficult to accept that she even existed in the actual world beyond imagination's boundaries. …Christine…. Simply hearing her name spoken by the ever-present voice in his head created every unwanted tingle of sensation that he so desperately yearned to avoid. For six months, it had been almost too easy to pretend that she was only the heroine of his opera, to idealize her every characteristic into something akin to perfection and pretend flaws had never been present. As a fictional character in his mind, she could be faultless and transcendental; she could be everything he'd always wanted her to be. Perhaps a masochistic part of himself had convinced him that if he saw her in reality, she might be his creation brought to life instead of her true insufficient self; perhaps that had been why he had chosen to attend the Masquerade Ball like another ridiculous masked party goer and seek her out. And what had he found? Had he not set himself up for failure at the conception of his plan? His beautiful, perfect Christine was the same flawed human being she had always been, only now she had a Vicomte on her arm to fill in the holes in her countenance. Another role to play, but one she'd freely chosen…. And it sickened him because he was so sure even now despite every rift between them that she was doing just that, playing a part, the _acceptable_ one to want, creating a version of herself that was little different from her opera roles. Damn her weak naïveté! And damn himself for loving her still in spite of it all!

Huffing a forced breath in another attempt at calming emotion's cresting waves, he desperately wished that he had something to busy himself. The opera was finished and out of his hands at present, leaving him the unwilling victim to ennui. If he only had something else to preoccupy his addled mind, then perhaps thoughts of revenge and destruction including as much collateral damage as was possible would cease tormenting him. His favored fantasy of late was one that involved torturing the arrogant Vicomte de Chagny practically to his demise, and then at the culmination of that glorious plot, he would place a choice before Christine: marry him or the Vicomte would die. It seemed ingenious in an imaginary setting and foolproof really; it gave him viable ideas….

In his current production of its heinous events, he was just arriving at the point where Christine would choose him and then declare that she had loved him all along when every thought evaporated with a rush of feeling he had not experienced in six months. He knew what it meant, and yet he was terrified to believe it. Sitting upright abruptly in his chair, he averted his desperate eyes to the door to his hidden home the instant before its knob turned and it was hesitantly opened with a resounding creak.

Six months since she had last ventured this way, and was it odd that it felt so familiar and almost longed for in her every step? Every scent, every image, the warmth that greeted her from the glowing fire in the hearth and drove away the chill of the catacombs as it radiated forward to embrace her; it was comforting simply to be there…, and yet every thought of home vanished in the moment her eyes met the power of that mismatched gaze piercing into her being from the second she passed the threshold.

For a long breath, Erik could only stare, sure that his own mind had conjured her image in a further effort to draw him to madness. No, no, she couldn't be real. Too beautiful for existence as always and still with those wide blue eyes, proclaiming innocence without her realization, and he raced a desperation to prove her tangibility along every feature of her face, idolizing porcelain skin and delicate arches and curves of tiny bones. None of those things convinced him that she was not a mirage; no, what did it was the large, heavy score clutched to her chest and cradled in small hands. That one detail returned reality and with it, his ability to speak coherent sentences.

"Why are you here?" he demanded, and yet the true extent of his recalled bitterness was only given away in a thin tightness of tone and the sudden loss of any warmth that had been brewing in his fixed stare.

Christine was shaken; his very presence had always had that effect upon her, and then to hear that voice, to know its words were only for her despite his attempt at coldness…, she felt a slight shiver breeze through every limb and clutched her score tighter so that he would not notice the shaking of affected arms. It took a concentrated effort to manipulate her lips and make them form words as she tentatively stammered, "I…I need your help."

"_My_ help?" he demanded back, favoring hostility. If he didn't, he was so certain that he would love her in that moment with or without his own consent. No, no, he had to hate her; he had to remember that there was a valid reason that he had not shared the air with her in six months. Ah yes, because six months before she had betrayed him in the most horrible way possible; yes, indeed, _there_ was hatred. "Forgive my suspicion," he went on with his presumed coldness. "But six months and a supposed engagement would argue that you _need_ nothing from me, not any longer anyway."

Her knees were shaking beneath layers of skirts, and she idly shifted on her feet in hopes of hiding it, determined to show him no waver. No, she wanted to seem resolved; she had to. Defiantly keeping her head raised and eyes upon his, she stepped closer with confident footfalls until she could toss the heavy score to the coffee table beside his chair. "I can't sing this," she stated flatly, refusing to be swayed by the shrewd narrowing of his mismatched stare. "You overestimated my capabilities when you wrote my role."

Erik genuinely contemplated the accusation, turning her words over in his head and testing their accuracy as his introspective mind heard snippets of the orchestration in his inner ear. Fast-moving passages of notes, fluid cadenzas, high tessitura, chromatic ornaments, …but no, he could clearly hear her voice singing each and every one and surpassing his expectations just as he had imagined it. Shrugging slightly in the face of such confrontation of his work, he countered, "Perhaps I wrote it with your _potential_ in mind instead. You _can_ sing it, Christine; it will be a challenge, but not an impossibility. If you are here to command me to rewrite portions that are not to your liking, I adamantly refuse; it is perfection already and will not be altered by any divas' tantrums, whether they be yours or Carlotta's. Not a single note will be changed."

Christine was shaking her head solemnly. "A diva's tantrum? You know me better than that; you know that I am not a diva."

"I haven't _known you_ in six months," he pointedly snapped. "I can hardly assume how preparing for your future title has transformed your personality. I'm sure a Vicomtesse must boast some sort of ego."

"I am _not_ a Vicomtesse," she protested, denying her instinctual urge to cower and take his every biting insult without retaliation.

"Well, not yet, but that is currently just a technicality of a couple of missing vows. One simple 'I do', and it will be yours just as you wanted all along."

"What I wanted," she breathed softly to herself before forcing the thought away and returning to her purpose. "I am not here to lay blame for our past or sort out the pains we've caused each other at every chance. I am here in need of a teacher. I can't learn this role on my own; I don't have knowledge of the correct technique for what you asking me to do. I need you to help me, Erik, and if you want this role performed to your standards, you will have to agree."

The mocking chuckle that escaped him crawled upon her skin with its rising dread. She knew that laugh as the typical precursor to his temper, but she continued to feign nonchalance as he sarcastically retorted, "You must be joking."

"Not at all," she declared back, matching his tone, and she was pleased to realize how vividly her resolve surprised him as the intrigue played on his masked face.

"Six months, Christine," Erik suddenly snapped as if it were the most important point of all. "We have not spoken in six months, not a word to one another; we haven't seen each other, not even the indiscretion of a secret glance through a mirror. Six months ago, you betrayed me, my trust, my affections, my every hope in life, and I nearly killed you for it, if you'll recall. I practically dropped a chandelier upon your head. And yet here you are, on my doorstep, in my house, and what do you expect of me then? To pretend that we are six months in the past and nothing has changed from the days of angels with unmarked faces?"

"As I said, this is not about our sordid past," she replied, desperate to seem unaffected but failing miserably as the memories drew her back within their hold. The shifting shadows of swaying candles upon the theatre walls, the gasps and screams permeating the crowd, the deafening screech of shattering glass; she had been mere steps from the chandelier's descending point of impact and had wondered for months if he had missed hitting her on purpose, praying incessantly that it was true because never before had he attempted to harm her.

Mercifully burying the thought, she posed the details of her plan to eyes that she could clearly see were sharing in the regret-inducing haze of memory and exposing a guilt she had not anticipated. "The managers have given us a reprieve of two days' time while they hire extras for the cast and crew and begin set design. When we return to rehearsals, we are to have our parts learned and prepared for our first musical run-through."

"And you want me to…," he purposely trailed off and impatiently gestured for her to complete his thought.

"To spend the next two days preparing me to sing this role." Christine spoke the command with the conviction that she usually lacked; no, she had never possessed it or the internal streak of bravery that should have been sewn so securely within, but she had never before known what she wanted as surely as this either.

That laugh met her again as his initial response, and she inwardly cringed with a fear that he would leap to anger and throw her out instead. Shaking his head beneath a constant smirk, he insisted, "Explain to me exactly what you are asking of me, Christine, so that I may know which point to call the most ridiculous."

But she did not back down, and as stoic as she could manage to be, she calmly stated, "I will stay here with you for the next two days, and just as we did so often before, we will work as teacher and student, and you will teach me what I need to know to sing this role."

Erik had leaned back in his chair, bridging his fingers thoughtfully before him as he listened, and as she finished and awaited his reply expectantly, he chuckled slightly and declared, "This entire plan is rather presumptuous of you, isn't it? I cannot imagine that your fiancé would approve."

"He need not know," she insisted without waver. "I told him that I intended to take this respite from our current drama to travel to Perros to visit my father's grave. He wasn't pleased with such news, but he knew he had no right to stop me."

"Ah, so darling Raoul believes that you've gone already," Erik declared with rising amusement. "You rid yourself of your fiancé and his need for heroics and came to me alone and unguarded. And how are you so certain now that you've willingly wandered into the den of the dragon that I won't refuse to let you leave ever again? That is what your fiancé would have expected; he has practically been waiting for me to try and steal you away. Perhaps I should keep to my expected role; I wouldn't want to disappoint my audience after all. Perhaps I shall keep you as a punishment for your naïveté in coming here."

"You won't," she firmly stated without even a single hint of doubt in the background.

"And why not? As the villain in the story, I am entitled. Why wouldn't I do it and take my prize?" Part of him was desperate to scare her, seeking the fear that unavoidably followed her every action and would show the crack in her bravado, and it shocked him to no end that he could not find its presence.

Calm as could be, she answered in one omnipotent word, "Redemption."

"Redemption? And that is your platform?"

"This scheme that you have undertaken isn't about me."

"_Everything_ is about you," he protested inarguably and could not keep his eyes from roaming the subtle nuances of her angelic visage once again. It was odd after so long spent living in his head with imagined visions of her to no longer be in control of her words and emotions, to have to study her to find the details instead of creating them himself. This moment was an ideal example: his statement had made her skin turn a slight shade of pink with a hinted blush, and it frustrated him that he had no idea why and what unshared thoughts she was having to make such a response.

"No," she contended, though the blush remained, "this is about the music and your own retribution. You have spent your entire lifetime without acknowledgment for your talents, for your very right to exist and merely the fact that you do. You want to show the world the brilliance of the music you've created. …If this was only about me, then you would have come for me and stolen me away six months ago; you wouldn't have spent that time alone, composing and finishing your opera."

Erik never gave any hint to how near the truth she was, and neither did he reveal the point she was missing in her deduction: that he had already anticipated losing her in the end, that he had chosen to obsessively complete his opera because she was the one and only woman who he wanted to imagine as his heroine and he was strangely desperate to have it performed as he had envisioned it before it was too late and she was too fear beyond his reach. If music was the only means through which he'd ever have her, he was going to have one performance that was solely his.

"My opera," he said with a certain amount of melancholy attached, "is the culmination of my life. It is everything I've always wanted and known I could never have, everything I've ever felt and everything I've ever loved, all encompassed in one span of music."

Nodding, Christine agreed, "And to be granted recognition for it is to be accepted into existence and to show every person that beneath everything else, you are a human being just the same. You need to have this, Erik, and I have no doubt that if you want it to the degree of perfection in your head, you will have to consent to my proposal. I can't give this to you without your help."

Growing darkly somber, Erik let his stare drift from the only image it wanted and forced it on fluctuating flames instead. This was suddenly something he craved with such vibrant intensity, and yet…was this to be enough to sustain him? It was unanticipated, extra time with her that he was certain was not meant to be his, but didn't its existence make the inevitable outcome all the more cruel to behold? Time with her, avoiding the true rifts in their relationship and the mounting pain that had filled in between, time caught in a bubble that he would lose and mourn as intently as every other detail that slipped beyond his grasp. And this time would be the hardest of all because, even though his fraction of remaining sense insisted against it, hope was thriving and breathing in the corners of this scene, a hope he had wanted to call dead by every right, and yet a hope that had _never_ died.

"_Ange_?" she called, gently breaking into his reverie with that one word that he could not keep from savouring, his eyes drifting closed a long exhalation as the timbre of it washed through him and left goosebumps along his skin. The cynical voice in the back of his head mocked his natural reaction and insisted that her usage of such a term was a manipulation; she above all people knew how truly far from its definition he was. 'Devil' besotted him better.

And yet as he dragged his stare back to her awaiting blue eyes, he caught a glimpse of sentiment and nostalgia, of emotions that six months before had fitted into place and now seemed so utterly uncomplicated in retrospect. Above all else, he found that innocent anticipation that he recalled had once been only his, trepid and unsure but fringed in a sort of excitement that always made him feel like an integral part of her existence.

Attempting to retain a façade of apathy even if surging hope peeked out at every chance, he conceded, "All right. We'll begin in the morning, but if you are to be ready to sing this, be forewarned that our work will be grueling and exhausting. It's been a long time since I've taught you, and I want it quite sufficiently understood that I expect everything and then some, Christine. You would expect no less from me as teacher; I will ask the same from you as student." When she gave her nodded agreement with that anticipating glow never fading from the blue depths of her eyes, he bid as he had in days past, "Well, go in to bed then, and get some rest. I will expect you ready to sing after breakfast."

The slightest curve of a smile was upon her lips, but she never allowed it to fully bloom as she softly bid, "Goodnight then, Erik. …Thank you."

He could not help but shy away from gratitude; it was unusual and a burden he did not favor, so shrugging it off without a reaction, he simply stated back, "Goodnight, Christine. …Sweet dreams."

Sweet dreams…. For some reason, she could not doubt that they would be. As he lost himself in a trance with the flickering flames in the hearth again, she paused one instant longer and watched the peculiar manner in which the reflected shadows and glows played upon the stark white of his mask, stealing away the usual threat that it seemed to naturally hold. The light of the fire softened the edges of every detail of him, making six months of fabricated fear seem impossible and without justification. This was no more than a man, and other details could not hold sway; no, not before a lit hearth that seemed to welcome her home….

Erik was distracted, but subconsciously, he had not severed every sense from her presence. His attuned ears focused on the sound of her footsteps as she finally walked the narrow corridor to her room, and only when she was gone did he turn and study the place where she had stood as if an image of her silhouette lingered there still. He would have convinced himself that he had just imagined the entire scene and every detail of her if not for the inarguable fact that he could _feel_ her in the house. It was as if the very air had changed; it had been stagnant and heavy for six long, unendurable months, and now a fresh breeze sweet as springtime had flooded in and permeated through to every dark corner, chasing out cobwebs and brightening with sunlight.

The slightest smile tinged his lips before he could berate its presence, and try as he might to keep realism with only pessimistic declarations, he could not avoid the odd and contenting sensation that screamed that this was the way things were meant to be; Christine, in his home, in his life, as tied to his existence as he was to hers. If only she could see that….

* * *

It was the middle of the night, or so the clock in Christine's room had insisted in the instant she had stirred from a dream and found herself in a familiar canopy bed as if six months in between had never actually happened. Part of her wished to call them nothing more than a nightmare that she was only now being roused from, but the other part saw their vibrant importance in a way that made their passing imperative. Six months and about a billion thoughts during that span of time, laying a new foundation that was stronger than ever. Separation could have such an effect when the only emotions suffered were regret and grief and interspersed guilt; she knew their power all too well as their unwilling victim, agonizing alone, never letting Raoul see, admitting only to her innermost self the blatant truth that had stared at her amidst it all. And it was that truth that had brought her back to this place and six months in the past with a new perspective and a hope of her own to settle the ache of her heart.

Quiet as a whisper, Christine climbed out of her bed, abandoning warm blankets and resting bare toes lightly upon the chilled carpet. The mantra playing continuously in her mind and encouraging her onward was that she needed to do this, needed to see and feel and know before she dared any more. Tiptoeing on feet that barely touched the floor for fear of any and every telltale creak to proclaim her indiscretion, she left the sanctity of the room and edged across the narrow corridor lit as always by a single dim sconce upon the wall. If not for that meager glow, everything would have been pure blackness day or night, and she remembered considering once that Erik must take good care to keep it lit because she often forgot how far beneath the surface of the earth his home actually was.

Cautious in every footstep, she made not a single audible sound as she crossed to the one other room within the hallway's narrow confines. Erik had left his bedroom door ever so slightly ajar, and she had a thought that he intended to hear her lest she awaken. Of course he had not anticipated that she would be extra diligent to be stealthy and silent if she tried because why would she ever purposely creep into his bedroom in the middle of the night? Why indeed….

Her feet only brushed the ground as she carefully slid inside, leaving the door parted a meager crack so that a thin stream of dim light guided her way. She paused in her trek and listened a long, held breath, searching for sounds of consciousness; but all that met her intent ear were the relaxed, repetitive exhalations of deep sleep. No, she had not roused him with her intrusion, and yet would it have been a tragedy if she had? Perhaps she could hope that he would surmise the truth himself without her ever having to admit it. But that was optimistic; knowing Erik, his temper would reply first and foremost before rational thought could be fathomed.

And so it was better that he slept on as she crept soundlessly to his bedside, and by the scant rays that spied from the hallway, she let her hesitant eyes come to rest upon that face…and just stared. There it was, vividly on display where she could not block it out of existence or forget and avoid its creation. That face..., unmasked and exposed, …blatant and real to her unthreatening regard. This was the image that was etched so intricately in her mind's eye. This was a visual horror, an ugly and pitiable replication of a nightmare…. And how long had she loved its every damaged detail?...

Dear God, just thinking the words felt like a betrayal of Raoul and of her very self. She hadn't meant to do it; that was her excuse to herself; she had never meant to love Erik. It wasn't supposed to be this way; her _life_ wasn't supposed to be this way. She was _supposed to_ love Raoul, _supposed to_ want Raoul, _supposed to_ fear Erik and this face and run from it for the salvation of her soul. No, she hadn't meant to love him, and yet she had; she _always_ had…since days of angels with white wings and unflawed perfection. …She loved him…. And how bitter was reality against that one plain truth when everything was on the verge of being shattered.

Hardly breathing for fear that one sound would rouse him, she studied the face she had once foolishly denounced, taking in its every flaw. It was half a skeleton's face, half dead and half alive, as if he had always been one foot beyond the rest of the world and into the omnipotence of the afterlife. Her eyes trailed its ghastly details in the way her fingertips tingled and yearned to do the same, following the line of transparent skin over his cheek, the sunken eye lost in the cavernous bone of its socket, the flat expanse that should have been a nose. A corpse, this was a corpse and yet equally a living, breathing man, and dragging her eyes from the imperfections, she instead made an attempt to focus on the points that spoke of his normalcy. It was almost an odd thing to do because that was the image she saw at any typical time in his presence, the mortal side of that face, a defined jawline, a high cheekbone, a smooth brow, the arch of his hairline. Too often those features, though always present and on display, became lost by the presence of the mask as its manmade barrier became the focal point. How much easier would it be to accept this face as the sum of both parts if it was always revealed in every moment of every day? Surely, without being left to ponder its secrets hidden from view, the novelty would fade away, and it would become as ordinary as any other.

The shy touch of a smile curved her lips as she considered that this was the most intimate image she had ever been granted of him. Relaxed and vulnerable, lacking threat or the pressure that often came with a direct glance in green and blue eyes. What humbled her further was the thought that _no one_ had had this image of him before. And for as ugly as scars and deformities were, this was almost beautiful; how could it not be when it created such vibrating reverberations in her heart that thudded along with its every beat and circulated in her blood? Emotion made a new picture entirely; it transformed the face of a monster into the face of her love…. And yet she couldn't tell him, …not yet. After all she had done and all the pain she had caused him, she doubted he'd even believe her. She had to beg her heart to be patient, to try to mend every broken place she could, …and yet wasn't Raoul always a thought in the background? To love Erik meant to betray Raoul, and she was still uncertain that she could do that when Raoul loved her so much. Someone was bound to be hurt…. Dear Lord, she didn't want to have the power to cause such pain. It was overwhelming.

Forcing all unpleasant considerations from her mind, she tried to focus only on the sleeping man before her, damaged but with such an extraordinary heart; she was sure that she didn't deserve its amazing adoration, but she wanted it so much. It was on the wings of such a thought that she dared to reach shaking fingertips toward that face. She never touched him, not a real touch; she only grazed the air above that malformed cheek, and that would have to suffice as she told herself and curled her longing fingers into her palm. Soon, she promised her heart, and as silent as she arrived, she snuck back to her room without ever waking her sleeping angel.


	2. Chapter 2

"No, no, no, that's not right," Erik scolded sharply, tapping a finger against the faltered passage upon the open scorebook while his other hand was pounding out the exact pitches on the piano's keys. "You're still singing an A natural when it should be an A flat."

"A natural is in the chordal progression beneath," Christine snapped back, more than a little annoyed at being stopped yet again for the same folly. "The A flat is chromatic dissonance; it's impossible to find."

"Chromatic dissonance?" he repeated, matching her irritation. "I am after an emotion with this passage, not common practice."

"But it's an ornament," she protested. "As the performer, shouldn't I be allowed some liberties? When La Carlotta is the lead soprano, she devises her every ornament and cadenza on the spot, and they change night to night."

"No," Erik stated back firmly and utterly inarguably, "you will sing what is on the page and nothing else and that includes the A flat. Now do it again."

Though she scowled slightly, she did not argue the point further, knowing how futile such an effort would be. They had been working all day, and even if he had been merciful enough to let her sing the highest spots down an octave to preserve her voice, he had been tireless in his pursuit of getting every note and rhythm into her head. She had not been exaggerating the previous day to claim that he had written her a role that was nearly impossible to sing; try as she might, she could not seem to hear it with his ears and figure out where a progression was meant to go when its path was opposite of everything she'd ever been taught. At first, she had believed that his purposeful difficulty had carried an ulterior motive, as if he had deliberately wrote it that way to manipulate her into seeking his help, knowing she'd never be able to do it on her own. Now…well, now she was realizing that wasn't the case at all. He was just a genius who was pushing music beyond its usual boundaries and into new, unexplored territories. If only she could do his brilliance justice, but all she seemed to be doing was wandering and searching for her notes and praying to God that they were the right ones!

"No!" Erik shouted again, halting mid-chord at the same passage. "I truly don't see why this is posing such a problem for you." He beat out the ornament yet again and halted harshly on the A flat, striking its pitch continuously as if to engrain the timbre of it in her ear's memory.

"Didn't I just sing it that way?"

"No, you sang some undiscovered pitch _between_ the A natural and A flat, which, though dissonant, yes, actually just makes it sound like a mess."

Huffing her annoyance over the entire issue, she suddenly slammed her score closed and wearily rested her elbows upon the bow of the piano, watching him with a deeply furrowed brow. "I don't recall you ever being this rigid with my previous repertoire. You used to say to let the emotion of the piece guide me, and if it felt like it wanted to be pulled in places, drawn out, or have an ornament added, to do so if it conveyed the feeling of the piece."

"Yes, but while keeping the integrity of the music intact," he corrected and took the moment to let his eyes fix on a falling lock of dark hair that had slipped free of the loose bun she had tamed her curls into sometime during their extensive practice session. As the firelight caught it in its motion, it gleamed with strawberry-colored overtones and shined like silk that he ached to touch and know against his skin.

Never noticing his distraction, she demanded back, "And a single A natural in a rapidly moving succession of notes that are independent of the accompaniment, mind you, compromises the integrity of the music?"

"Most definitely, especially if you have foolishly decided to work under the tutelage of the composer of said music. I know precisely what I was after when I wrote that line, and you may find the A flat as a nuisance, but I find it imperative to the true inspiration of the entire aria." Shaking his head decisively, he suddenly insisted, "You are over-thinking it, Christine; just…just close your eyes and listen."

Christine hesitated only a moment before complying, and from his place at the piano, Erik took the opportunity to gaze upon her unnoticed, engraining the vision of her in his mind, trusting him as she always did when he was in the role of teacher. If only he could have that trust always, but too many crimes and the fluctuations of an unpredictable temper had stolen such tokens from his grasp. Damn his own capability to destroy every conjured chance for love!

Gazing always at her with no need to look at the notated music in front of him, he played her aria, adding her melodic line atop the fluid, moving accompaniment so that she could hear the true fit of the two together. It was like some sort of unacknowledged duet between the voice and orchestra, and when it was performed exactly, it was perfection encompassed on staves and such glorious sound as had never been heard before. And he knew it was true when he saw the emotions behind its conception vividly portrayed across Christine's pretty features as she willingly let herself drown in the lush melody. When his fingers arrived at her faltered ornament, he wove her line so intricately into the accompaniment that he knew she would be able to feel how inseparable one was from the other and how perfectly they complimented each other, most especially with the cursed A flat. He knew she'd understand that its presence made sense.

As he let the final chord of the piece ring through the room and fade out on its own, he gently called, "Open your eyes, Christine." Those blue eyes fluttered, and as they met his, he read such awe in her stare, such adoration, things he had not been the recipient of in so long that they felt imagined in his memory. Desperate for something more, he pushed, "What are you thinking about right now?"

In a quiet tone that just barely filtered above the ringing piano, she replied, "I'm thinking that I can hardly believe that you wrote something so extraordinary for me to sing. It's…. My God, it's exquisite, Erik. I don't deserve such an accolade, not after…everything. …You created such beauty for me at the same time as you must have been abhorring me so completely…."

"Fiction exists in the music," he replied with a flicker of his true somberness to be reminded. "Everything else can be forgotten within its perimeters. In music's sphere, I couldn't remember to hate you. I only felt what the music told me to, and for six months, I ignorantly lived in its world because it was so much easier and less painful than reality. In the music, I could love you, and you couldn't hurt me for it."

His accusation was a bitter sting, and the guilt it brought erupted in the vibrant blue of her eyes, unhidden and so poignantly displayed to his suddenly apathetic regard.

"Erik," she tried, almost pleading with him in that one solitary word to bare his heart rather than bury it so far away from her desperate reach.

"No," he spoke firmly to her unuttered desire. "You wish me to simply forgive your past indiscretions. How could I possibly? I can't even look upon you right now and forget their existence or how easily you betrayed me without even a fraction of coercion. No, you were all too eager as if…as if we'd meant nothing to each other." Apathy bore its faults in bursts of true emotion, appearing here and there as it trickled out from behind his self-imposed wall and insisted at the damaged heart locked within. "I chose to lose myself in the music to avoid the truth, but when I came out again, it was there waiting for me with every repercussion in its bitterness. You ran from me; you went to him; you _chose_ him; and on top of all of that, you cursed and blighted me to him. In one night, you destroyed me and left nothingness in your selfish wake."

Silent tears were spilling down Christine's cheeks as she held his biting glare and forced herself to see the destruction, to realize the power that she possessed and had ignorantly abused. And what excuse did she have? Even love could not excuse her folly. With forgiveness as an unthinkable option, she chose to indulge his game of accusation instead. "Yes, and you responded by dropping a chandelier and disappearing for six months. Did you not even worry once that you might have killed me that night? That was your intention after all, wasn't it? For all you knew, I could have been dead; that chandelier fell right in front of me. It was a miracle that I wasn't hit. Did you know that? Or were you actually hoping that it had landed atop me?"

Narrowing eyes at her, Erik never fully showed her the depth of his own remorse, only insisting, "I knew you weren't killed, and I knew the chandelier wouldn't hit you. It was a warning, Christine, not an attempt at murder." Hesitating a breath, he grew somber under heavy thoughts and contemplated silently before he ever revealed a word of a soft secret. "I did not just disappear that night. I actually…sought you out."

A strange hope flickered in her eyes as she eagerly pushed, "You did? …You came after me?"

Erik slowly nodded. "I wanted to make sure that you were all right. Dropping the chandelier was a rash response of my temper; I knew it wouldn't actually strike you when I did it, but…I hadn't anticipated the glass. You had cuts…. I snuck into the de Chagny mansion. Your Vicomte's paid security staff are lackluster at best," he added with a roll of his eyes. "It took no effort on my part to bypass them and end up right at your bedside. You had cuts…," he repeated, unable to quell the extent of self-hatred that glowed in his reminiscent eyes. "You were asleep when I was there; I made sure you never knew. I was already undoubting what your reaction would be: hatred, fear, the same as every other person whose life I've touched. What you did and your betrayal may have destroyed us, but what I did…; well, I put the final nail in the coffin, as they say. I never anticipated anything else after that."

"And so you left me," she suddenly blamed between tears. "You were gone entirely from my life."

"And what would you have had me do?" he abruptly snapped back. "Does it surprise you that I did not seek further vengeance? Murder your Vicomte and carry you off with me, never to let you go again? Is that what you would have expected from me and what you lived in fear of for six months?" Those mismatched eyes were ablaze in the growing fire of his rage as he continued, clenching fists against the wood of the piano. "Because I am a monster, isn't that so, Christine? And a monster cannot be civilized and act like a man? …A monster, that was one of the terms you dubbed me to your darling Vicomte that night."

Cringing with the shameful memory, she ducked her head to avoid the accusations in those eyes, sure she was not strong enough to carry their verity upon her shoulders. "I'm sorry," was all she could whisper, the tears unceasing as they made their rivulets along her cheeks.

"Why?" he shouted back at her. "It's true, isn't it? I _am_ a monster; I nearly killed you without a thought. Monsters are unfeeling and without mercy, aren't they? The epitome of a cold-hearted murderer. It must have pleased you to know that you were right. Truly, Christine, you spoke no lies that night. You called me ugly, a gargoyle, a corpse; all of which are valid. I don't deny a single one. You accused me of heinous crimes and sins on my soul; again, those points are true. The only unconsidered facet within any of it is the fact that monsters should not know regret for their horrible injustices, and I…well, I've been _tormented_ with regret whether or not I've wanted to be." He was chuckling to himself distantly, mocking as it was, and insisted, "And then amidst it all, you appear on my doorstep and return to my presence as if none of it ever happened, as if by some miracle of God, we could forget that it was anything beyond some horrid nightmare. Do you have any inkling of an idea how it has tortured me to look at you all day and pretend that the music is the only important thing in this room to me? …I wish to God that you hadn't have come here."

"You're lying," she immediately replied even as the doubts surged to life within her.

He never answered; he only continued, "But then again if you hadn't, my opera would have been butchered by your mediocre performance of it. Without my help, God only knows what you would have done to it."

Erik knew that his harsh insults hurt her, but he refused to let himself care, keeping only resentment as his own. It hung thick in the air as if it had a tangibility to its makeup, and beneath its suffocation, Christine cowered with buckling knees that no longer wanted to support an upright stance. It was too much, and it was all directed at her, transforming every idea of fixing the gaps between them into the absurd dream of a naïve little girl.

"Christine…." He spoke her name with such soft beauty, anger fading in the face of her incessant tears, and he cursed his own ability to take every uncommon blessing in his life and ruin it so completely. She would not meet his eye any longer, shifting apprehensively on her feet as those crystal tears shimmered and dripped from the gentle curve of her jaw to strike with dark splotches upon her gown; every one bore an unuttered dagger into his heart to be its cause.

"You're right," she whispered, fearing if she sought her voice, it would only waver and give out with her weakness. "I was foolish to come here; I will trouble you no longer."

And before he could form a protest, Christine turned and fled from his presence, from the house, from the life she wanted but was still too afraid to take.

"Christine!" Erik shouted after her, but his only reply was a slammed door in her wake.

The sound of her name and that angel's voice followed her, nipping her heels with her every frantic step, but she never halted. All she could think was that she had to get away. Up, up, back into the world that she belonged to, and she found herself in a darkened, vacant opera house, _locked_ inside. Freedom was no longer an option, but she refused to dwell upon it, choosing instead to continue upward, toward heaven if that was possible.

As if it was a natural conclusion, she found herself emerging onto the empty rooftop of the opera, welcoming the gust of cold night wind that ensnared her in its hold and encircled her in a burst of falling snow. Snow, and she had no idea when it had started its pure and delicate shower, not when she had practically been buried all the day long as ignorant as someone who was dead and in the grave to the happenings of the living world. No, she was alive, as she insisted to herself. Of course, alive, surely in death, her heart would not be aching with such intensity in her chest.

Without a thought, Christine slowly slid to her knees upon the snow-covered ground, never bothering to wipe away the tumbling flakes that struck her upon their descent. They tangled in her disheveled hair and melted as they touched her cheeks to mingle with tears. It didn't matter because it felt so real, so tangible, and when an aching heart could be offered no solace and could not have its injury soothed away, she chose to focus on the cold outside instead, on wet snow and frigid air, on a layer of white atop the great statues near her huddled shape, on the dark clouds hiding moonglow above her head. She insisted to that internal anguish that there was an entire world beyond her suffering and catacombs and opera ghosts. Perhaps if she concentrated with an obsessive fixation, then she could forget how to hurt.

"If you intended to race out into the cold, you could have at least paused long enough to take a cloak with you." Erik's voice and sudden presence a few feet from her kneeling place were unsurprising; she had half-expected him, and with shaking fingers, she hastily swiped the tears from her cheeks and snowflakes by default as he watched her with hesitant eyes all the while. "If you catch ill, then everything we accomplished today will have been done in vain. What will be the point of all of this and the dramatics attached if you catch a cold and cannot sing come rehearsal time?"

Christine did not answer, preferring the chill as it soaked through her gown and found its way to bone beneath. Cold, life, the rest of the world…, and yet every thought evaporated as she noted the trail of his shifted stare and the immediate rise of a sorrow he seemed unable to fully conceal. Across the way and feet from the edge, and that was the place where she and the Vicomte had shared an illicit embrace six months before in a moment that had altered every bit of her world.

Even as he stared at that spot, he spoke distantly to her, "You know, I always used to wear gloves; do you recall, Christine? I was never without them in your presence even when six months ago the days were balmy with summer. You never found it odd because you didn't know any differently, but I never wore them for warmth. I wore them only to keep my hands from ever touching you."

His admission shook and surprised her as she abruptly averted her stare to his now-bare hands and wondered why she had not thought it strange when she had arrived, and shaking her head incredulously, she asked, "Why would you do that?"

"Why?" he repeated but without the anger she had expected; no, she only heard sadness. "Because you were so disgusted with me after you saw my face. I thought if I was just so careful never to inspire disgust from you again, if I could show you that I would do anything to appease you, then eventually I might still have the hope I had thought crushed. I wanted to be extra vigilant with you; I wanted to give you no more reason to hate me." Refusing yet to cast another look at her, he only stared at that accursed spot as if through some imagined window, he was glimpsing six months in the past and seeing the embracing couple still there frozen in time. "And that was what hurt me the most that night. It wasn't the names and insults; it wasn't even when you let him kiss you because to me, a kiss was so far beyond what I'd ever believed I could have. No, it was that he could touch you without gloves or barriers and learn the way your skin felt against his. I thought denying myself would eventually win such a pleasure for me, and he…he didn't have to do anything, and it was granted as his."

A touch, she had never perceived it to be so important or to hold such monumental significance in her own life. Could she even recall the details of it now? Had Raoul touched her arm, maybe a cheek? It had been such a casual intimacy that against the weight of a kiss, it had held no value. As she pondered it to herself, she allowed her eyes to settle on Erik's hands, captive at his sides with fingers that randomly curved into his palms and out again, and she briefly wondered why he had not taken to wearing the gloves today…unless, of course, he believed that she was too far lost to him for it to matter anymore. Such a concept made the ache in her heart throb so violently that she had no choice but to acknowledge it.

Refusing trepidation and any of its allies, Christine slowly rose from her place, clumps of snow tumbling from her skirts in her motion, and as Erik turned dubious eyes to her, she came to stand before him while the snowflakes parted and made way for her intrusion in their gentle cascade. With only the slightest hesitation, she suddenly captured each of his bare hands in hers, weaving fingers together in a firm hold and resting palm to palm.

Dear God, her skin was still so warm; that was his first consideration before any question of why could arise. Warm in spite of the frigid air around them while his own always retained a natural chill that set him a step nearer to the depiction of that infernal corpse. If he did not feel the vibrant racing of his heart in dull thuds against his ribs, he would have agreed that he might very well be the walking undead and as far along the spectrum of life from her as was possible. She was just _so alive_, soft, warm, hands that were dwarfed in comparison to his, and so fragile in his hold, so breakable; he was reminded of falling chandeliers and the damage his temper could cause. How easy would it be to destroy this delicate woman? Perhaps he was a monster after all.

Finding his voice took longer than usual with her body so near to his, but when he could speak again, he denied the urgent message in his heart and flatly declared, "Your fiancé wouldn't approve of his intended touching a monster."

Christine did not reply; she didn't want to consider Raoul or his existence right then. No, there was much less guilt attached to pretend that nothing was real but the man before her and the tumbling snowflakes dancing in and out of her line of vision and coating them in some unnamed purity that snow seemed to carry in its essence, as if everything it grazed lost sin and found forgiveness without penance.

Holding the intensity of his blue and green stare and knowing her own was a mirror, she tentatively guided one of his captured hands upward until she could gently press the back of it to her cheek, keeping it yielding and fixed there even as it trembled against her. "You were afraid," she was whispering, "that your touch would disgust me. Do you now believe me when I tell you that it doesn't?"

"It should," he argued instead, his knuckles burning with the imprint her cheek was creating. "These hands have taken lives, Christine. I am not the same as your milksop Vicomte who has lived his privileged existence accepted in the world, an integral part of its every detail, beloved and envied. _No one_ envies me and my pitiful existence. I have no place in the world. And these hands have created violence the likes of which you could never imagine."

"But they've also created such music that I would give up the world to behold," she added and read the hesitant hope that he seemed afraid to fully give. "You have never touched me out of violence, Erik. My God, you've been _terrified_ to touch me."

"But I wasn't terrified to use these hands to cut the ropes restraining that chandelier. I may have never touched you out of violence, but I nearly killed you _without_ a touch." The self-loathing was thick in his voice; it was only intensified by her nearness, by looking into those eyes he so adored and longing to reveal every secret and every sin on his soul as if this would be his final confession to determine his salvation.

"There is no violence here," she insisted, arching her cheek firmer to his hand. "And no blame or regret. None of it exists at this moment, Erik. And disgust is not even a consideration."

"Isn't it?" he demanded back, unconvinced yet, and without pause, Christine tilted her face until she could lay a tentative kiss to his knuckles as a shudder racked his entire frame. If her skin was warm, then her lips were fire itself. One delicate kiss, and as she lifted those eyes back to his, it shocked him to see his own emotions reflected so vividly within her. She seemed as shaken as he was….

It wasn't intended to be more than a gentle assurance; yes, a gentle assurance, she told herself. Then why did she feel like _she_ was the one to know its caress? She had created and controlled every nuance, but she felt as powerless as its receiver, everything surging beyond its normal boundaries with that meager contact. It was more than anything she had ever felt from any single touch. Was this then the sort of magic that existed between two parts of the same heart? In a determined shriek, her mind was insisting what she already knew her answer, that she'd always known.

Erik could not understand the rapid progression of thoughts in her confused stare, and he wasn't sure he wanted explanations, certain that any words would destroy the preferred illusion he had built in his mind for this scene. He wanted the fantasy, and if she was about to end it, he chose to have one more moment as his. One set of joined hands was yet at his side, and guiding hers without resistance, he imitated her pose and delicately touched the back of her palm to his bare cheek, almost sighing in delight. It was almost a freely-given touch. She had not struggled, and even under his coercion, she did not show anything beyond a strange sense of yearning that he bore no reasoning to explain.

For one brief wisp of a moment, he let fantasy reign true, and as she had done, he turned his face and grazed his lower lip against her knuckle in as much of a kiss as the mask's presence would allow. The entire time he would not meet her eye, not as he formed the supposed indiscretion and certainly not as he suddenly drew away from her completely, breaking the haphazard embrace and severing any contact between skin.

"We need to get back inside," Erik reluctantly bid, still refusing even a single glance. "It's far too cold, and as I said, I won't have you catching ill and ruining our progress."

But she only gave a dull nod and dutifully obeyed, hardly acknowledging him beneath her overwrought mind as she led the way back and followed her own made footsteps in snow to the door. Her head felt like a jumble of nonsensical thoughts and interwoven emotions that fluctuated so quickly in and out of the forefront that she didn't truly know _what_ or _how_ to feel. She was so distracted that she never noticed the journey back below or returning to the warmth of the house hidden underground. How could she possibly when she was too busy trying to figure out whether or not she should know guilt for her actions? Her conscience insisted guilt, bringing musings she did not want about Raoul and her new talent of lying to him with such conviction that guilt only remembered to appear later. But her heart…, no, her heart was guiltless and insisting that she could not condemn herself for what she truly felt. She loved Erik; if any lingering questions had remained, a couple of caresses upon a rooftop had stolen them away, and she was doubtless.

"You best change and take a hot bath." Erik's voice broke into her silent meditation and almost surprised her with his presence as she was brought back to awareness. "That gown is soaked."

"Oh," was all she managed to utter, noticing the chill of its heavy layers for the first time, and shaking her mind free of thickly tangled thoughts, she took the excuse to flee his presence. Courage was always going to be her shortcoming; she could gather it and make minor alterations in the world but never the sort of vital change that shook the earth upon its axis. She was starting to see that if she wanted that sort of transformation to her life and the future that her heart ached for with Erik, she was going to have to muster every ounce of bravery she had ever possessed and pray that it would be enough.

Erik watched her go and heaved a sigh as he allowed his countenance to falter and willingly permitted his limbs to shiver as they wanted and fingertips to tingle with a desperation to touch her. He had to insist over and over again that she wasn't his, and yet how desperately did he want her anyway? Even when every doubt of his life taunted him that she must now be regretting her every bold endeavor, wishing she'd never dared to start this game all over again between them. Yes, because in the end, regret was all that thrived, always regret.

Erik did not expect to share her presence again that night, sure that the exhaustion of the day would urge her to bed, but a little later as he sat distantly lost in a stare at crackling flame, the soft whispers of her footsteps called to him. Without pause, he found her with his eager eyes and dared to indulge desire long enough to run a feverish gaze along every detail of her, fusing the vision of her gentle curves in her nightdress into his mind's eye.

Christine trembled from head to toe, convinced that he was touching her without even a grazing of fingertips, and as those swelling emotions encouraged an urge to flee, she forced bravery to keep her frozen in her place, refusing to surrender to weakness, even if her wide eyes made it seem as if she was teetering on its edge. No, no, she needed to be brave!

Erik was determined not to allow every second upon a rooftop to be forgotten and buried away, and without a moment to consider, he rose from his chair and gracefully approached her in long, adamant strides, relieved when she did not shrink away. Always under her attentive eyes, he lifted his hand and let it cross the span of air between them until he could trail the most delicate of caresses along her cheek.

Shivering before he even touched her with simply the anticipation, Christine stifled the eager gasp that yearned to escape with the very first contact; it seemed that she had spent every breath out of his presence longing for exactly this, and she did not stop herself from arching nearer to his cold fingers as he complied to follow the line of her jaw, wanting to learn every feature of her face in one touch. Never severing the connection of skin, he brought one quivering fingertip to her lips and very gently traced their perfect pink definition, glancing back and forth between her hazy eyes and the deliberate actions of his eager hand. How he wanted so much more! But, as he scolded himself in a rush, he vowed that this had to be enough.

With an abruptness that made her sway on her feet, he drew away, turning his back to her, and as he returned to his abandoned chair, he called, "Go to bed, Christine."

Arguments faltered on her tongue and never emerged from the protection of her mouth as with a protest only written in her eyes, she slowly complied, leaving him, desire, and every other yearning of her heart and taking her escape and the path of a coward. Was that all she'd ever be?...


	3. Chapter 3

Christine was distracted the next day as they continued to avoid the unacceptable by burying concentration in music. Erik was much more accomplished at such an endeavor than she could ever hope to be, and she was almost envious that he could make detachment seem so easy, dropping any aspect of his heart from his current persona of teacher. It should have made it possible for her to do the same, but any attempt was halted every time her attention caught upon his hands.

She took it as a subtle encouragement that he had not sought out his gloves after the previous night's slight indiscretions. No, he left bare skin open to her regard and to the chance of another touch, and dear Lord, was it any wonder that she could not seem to focus on music then? He was practically declaring that he wanted to touch her again, and her betraying skin echoed the sentiment with incessant tingles that danced along the surface so intensely that she would have believed that he had already touched her!

If concentration was a difficult and faltering feat, by afternoon, it was unachievable entirely. With the basic concept of notes and rhythms learned the previous day, they had spent the majority of the morning smoothing technique and applying character points into her arias. Presently, they had shifted to Act 3, and in Act 3 was a particular duet that Christine had barely been able to sing the day before without fumbling over the provocative words and blushing so furiously that she had purposely rushed them through it with excuses of fatigue as a feeble escape. Now he had her open to exactly its start, and she could feel the warmth already upon her skin.

"Are you all right, Christine?"

Erik's sharp question jolted her free of thought, and she stared at him with wide, apprehensive eyes as she quickly stammered, "Why would you ask such a thing?"

The portrait of teacher, he stated matter of factly, "You have been making mistakes left and right all day, and now you are flushed." Suddenly huffing with annoyance, he snapped in conclusion, "Did I not tell you that you would take ill out on rooftops in cold and snow? Perhaps we should end for the day, and you should go and rest."

"No!" she quickly insisted with an adamant shake of her head.

"You have a full rehearsal in the morning," he reminded as if she could have forgotten such a crucial point, "and I won't have the first impression you grant your cast mates be as a croaking frog."

"I'm fine, Erik," she declared without waver, mentally scolding her innocence and forcing some semblance of calm to take hold. "Can we please just keep going?"

Hesitating yet in an intent scrutiny of her features for more signs to prove his point, he finally conceded with a reluctant sigh, "All right, but if I hear one bit of hoarseness on your cords, we are stopping, and you are not to speak a single word for the remainder of the day."

Perhaps it wouldn't be as discomforting as she had perceived if she ignored the graphic details in the music. When her teacher was half a step from erupting into a rage and more than a little perturbed with her very existence, it seemed far easier to focus on technique and ignore the rest.

With hardly anymore notice to her, Erik launched into the fervent accompaniment, his hands gliding effortlessly across the keys in passages that Christine knew even virtuosic musicians would have at least some difficulty playing; he always made it seem like some intermediate exercise. And in the midst of frantic motion, he was even able to add a clearly distinct tenor line in solitary pitches cutting above the rest as the other half of her duet, and she was suddenly grateful that he had not offered to sing it with her. It had always been a rare occurrence and one she had typically longed for when singing with him was the most exquisite and amazing sensation she had ever known in her life. It was in the perfect way that their voices complimented each other, …as if they had been made for exactly that union, filling timbres where the other was lacking and weaving about each other in a sort of ethereal brilliance. If he sang with her now, she wasn't sure she would be able to continue on in some semblance of a mature and poised demeanor; no, she was sure that she'd be violently shaken to something entirely terrifying.

As he arrived at her entrance, Christine did not hesitate, knowing just how many entrances she'd already missed that day; she just began to sing, considering nothing but her pitch in her head.

Almost immediately, Erik halted with a slam of his palms upon the keys that bellowed out a dissonant mélange of frustrated notes. "No! You cannot sing it like that!"

His abruptness made her jump, instinctively curling her arms to her chest as if preparing for an attack instead. "…What do you mean?... Those were the right pitches, weren't they?"

"Pitch? This isn't about pitch," he retorted impatiently. "My God, Christine, you want to sing this like some sort of love duet!"

"But…isn't it?" she inquired with a tinge of nervousness as she pondered how far she could push his temper before it snapped completely.

"A love duet!" he shouted as if insulted. "Surely not! Have you even given a single thought to the words on the page? There is _no_ love in this piece."

"But you said that my role represents love-"

"She does, but this is about the _temptation_ of love; it's about innocence falling to desire. It can't be sung like some saccharine Gounod duet, Christine. It has to be dripping with sensuality, with lust. You have to make every man in that audience wish to be Don Juan in that moment and yearn to be the focal point of your newly-awakened desires." As he spoke, he watched her pale and then blush vibrantly pink, and as much as he longed to be only the teacher, he felt a certain adoration to glimpse her innocence so unguardedly on display. Perhaps he should have considered such a thing when he had written the piece, but in his mind's eye had been a longed for fantasy of her, a need to capture the object of his desires in one fictional and acted scene. This was supposed to be his very own seduction….

With a mental heave, he attempted to force the thoughts aside and return to the importance of the task at hand. If she could not sing it as he had intended, it would not only compromise the second half of the opera, but it would _never_ give him the fantasy that he ached to cling to for the lonely duration of eternity. With as much enacted dignity as he could muster, he suddenly demanded, "Christine, do you know what it is to desire?"

Pink upon her cheeks was deepening its hue as she nervously stuttered, "I…. Maybe…."

"Well, have you ever felt desire?" he pushed, unwilling to acknowledge how much of his actual self was as eager as the teacher in him to hear her flustered answers.

Had she…? If one called the terrifying outbreak of sensation that soared beneath her skin whenever she considered the facets of a love with Erik _desire_, but had she not run like mad from exactly that feeling? Too overwhelmed by its poignancy to imagine enduring the culmination of its power? To answer yes would be half a lie if she had truly only allowed desire's tentative echoes, and so her response was a shy aversion of eyes, an undimmed blush, and a softly muttered, "It's improper to discuss such things."

"Improper? You're eventually going to have to act an entire seduction onstage before an audience, and if this is too much for you-"

"No, no," she quickly interrupted, forcing herself to meet his eye and denounce a rush of abashed timidity. "I can do what you ask, Erik."

He wasn't convinced, but he calmly commanded, "All right. Try it again. From your entrance." He struck the last few chords before her starting pitch and watched her carefully as she applied a seemingly defiant countenance and began to sing her lines. Almost immediately, he stopped her once again with a firm shake of his head. "That isn't desire, Christine; that's terror."

Cringing to herself, her bravado failed quick as that and left her as the trembling child before him once again as she anxiously admitted, "I…I don't know what you want me to do…."

"You are an actress," he reminded as if the very fact had been overlooked. "Your task as an actress is to make me believe you; you need to be in your character's head, not your own, see what _she_ sees, feel what _she_ feels. Your character is being overcome with desire during this piece; even if you yourself are innocent and timid, _she_ is not. She knows what she wants and is determined to have it."

Christine knew a sudden rush of envy for a fictional character. If only she herself could do the same! But outside of a fairytale, too many other factors debilitated the choice to simply follow longing wherever it led.

"Christine," Erik was continuing, studying her at every unnoticed chance, "this scene is going to be acted before an audience and with _Piangi_ in the title role." An unavoidable huff spoke his distaste, but casting had its limitations and only one tenor available who could sing the part, never mind that he was far too old and overweight to be Erik's opportune Don Juan; he truly had had no choice. "You may not desire Piangi; but through the eyes of your character, he is Don Juan, and he's all you want."

An idea came to mind, but he was suddenly afraid himself to entertain it with her. It was nearly a transgression, but as her teacher, was it not his duty to prepare her to perform her role as believably as possible? By that thinking, this was practically a necessity. …And yet…. No excuse could keep him from trembling as he bid, "We can try it now, and I will be your Don Juan…. Make me desire you, Christine."

Blue eyes widened, but never a protest was uttered as she watched him tentatively rise from the piano's bench and take apprehensive steps nearer to her.

Better sense argued that this was not a good idea by any means, but perhaps he just ached to be a part of this scene with her too much, to be the one she desired even if it wasn't at all real; perhaps after the previous night, he had been just too fixated on the idea of touching her again, barely able to focus and half-annoyed with her all the day long for being too beautiful. Make him desire her…, he didn't dare tell her that in reality, she had to do nothing at all to achieve that very thing. He _always_ desired her to a point that kept him on his guard as he stood before her, desperate to put up his own façade and play a role that was, in all actuality, his.

"Please don't look so nervous," he bid as he watched her shiver uncontrollably on her feet, her blush still prominent and undimmed. "This isn't real, remember? We are no longer Erik and Christine, and even if you yourself have no desire for me, …make me believe that you do."

Her heart was racing in frantic syncopated beats against her ribcage as she fought to recall that she needed to breathe to survive. She didn't confide that she was terrified by this, _only_ because he was suddenly the other half of her duet. Desire…, and when she had spent months stifling its every flicker and pretending it wasn't a real emotion at all unless the word 'sin' was attached to it, she was truly unsure she knew _how_ to feel it. Pretending wasn't going to be an option with Erik so close; too much reality was interspersed. And he would believe it was a convincing role when she knew it was anything but!

"This isn't real," he repeated one more time in a soft whisper, and then succumbing to the desperation of an acute ache that radiated through every inch of his body, he began to sing Don Juan's lines.

The instant his voice struck her with every golden overtone in its utter brilliance, she shuddered, head to toe, uncontrolled, a natural reaction to something so beautiful and yet so unnerving at the same time. He wanted her to act desire; well, all he had to do was sing that way, and she understood all too much what her character was feeling.

Eager to inspire her and at the same time take everything he could from an allowed transgression, Erik reached to her with quivering fingers, singing words so impassioned that they danced along her skin preceding touch, and the instant his cold fingertips grazed her jaw, she could not contain a small gasp; it felt like a raindrop striking the surface of a pond and scattering in concentric circles outward further and further from its place of impact until every bit of her was overwhelmed. It was music and that voice and that yet hesitant touch, and Christine had no choice but to allow its consumption, unable to run from it this time. No, this was not supposed to be reality, not _her_ reality anyway, and she suddenly caught to that point with fisted fingertips and realized in one clear thought that if this wasn't reality, then she wasn't accountable, then inhibitions could be released and she could want him as much as he wanted her and no one was at fault; …no one could be hurt….

Erik's hand followed a delicate path down the side of her throat, his fingertips tingling with the sheer contact of her silken skin. It was evident how much she was shaking, and yet she never cowered and never drew away; no, there was actually a flicker of resolve in those hazy blue eyes as they met his, and he would have been surprised by its presence if he had not reminded himself that this was a scene in a play and never real. And if it was only pretend and he was Don Juan, then Don Juan would never hesitate as he was, would never tremble and carry a reminiscent timidity to every intentional caress. No, Don Juan would be utterly confident and seductive, convicted to have what he wanted. Confident, Erik repeated to himself as he brought his fingers along her collarbone to her shoulder and then drew the tips across the neckline of her gown, curving just beneath the lace trim to experience the flawless flesh of her chest and barely catch a hint of the swells of her breasts with his motion.

Christine nearly melted away beneath his touch, shuddering again and fighting not to yield completely; no, she couldn't because it was her turn to sing, and suddenly the game was in her own hands.

As Erik let his last note fade, he added in a thick whisper near her ear, "Make me desire you."

His voice made her dizzy, but she took a deep breath, convicted to put every sensation she was feeling into her portrayal, and Lord help him! After how intensely he had affected her, she was suddenly adamant that she would make him suffer all the more so, undoubting that he was as detached from his supposed role as she was. No, roles were an excuse, and she was willingly taking advantage of that.

A shiver raced Erik's entire frame in the moment she began to sing. Yes, this was what he had been after since they had started. Raw, unrestrained, every consonant past her lips was its own seductive sound, practically crawling along his skin, and her eyes…. She was unshaken, letting the desire beam out of her without hindrance. It wasn't real…; his sense of masochism was adamant to remind him, but at the moment, he refused to listen to it.

_This isn't real_, Christine told herself; no, she was playing a part, wasn't she? A character who didn't run from emotions, who didn't choose to fear desire rather than embrace it. _Make him desire her_…, yes, her character would be eager to do that.

Ignoring modesty's interference, she edged closer to Erik, playing his preferred game and using her voice first and foremost as she sang each desire-laden phrase as if it was an intimate musing in the dark, and it shocked her to see that she was affecting him the way he typically affected her. She had the power, and it amazed her. Lifting hands so determined in their task that they did not even shake any longer, she suddenly cupped his face between her palms, one to skin, one to his mask and yearning to feel scars instead. It was a temporary caress; her hands made paralleled paths down his neck to splay wide against the firm wall of his chest as she edged as close as she could to him.

Erik knew that she would feel the frantic racing of his heart and wondered if it gave him away and insisted for him that there was no game here, that he wanted her so much in this scene that was a fantasy brought to life. Her hands upon him…, had he ever ached for anything more? The softest sound escaped his lips as she suddenly brought those hands that raced fire in their wake down the broadness of his chest and out to his hips, removing them from between their bodies so she could scoot ever closer to him until they were nearly embracing without ever holding onto each other.

His eyes were mesmerized to the graceful details of her face so near to his, and they were continuously captured on the motion of softly-sculpted lips with every desirous word that they shaped so perfectly. Every instinct begged him to steal sound, to catch every glorious pitch and hold them tight between joined lips in a necessary kiss; that was impulse, but reality burst in with one piercing thought to his intruding mask. And one validity led to the next: this wasn't real, and she wasn't his….

With an abruptness that made her choke back her next words, he jerked beyond her grasp and stated flatly, "Yes, I think you've gotten the point. I expect nothing less when Piangi is singing with you. Never forget: you are an actress; you must portray what isn't real with believability. …You will do fine, Christine."

She wouldn't meet his eye, her entire body frigid where his had stood against her, and the blush that had never dulled upon her cheeks went from being rooted in modesty to being rooted in abashed chagrin.

"Well…." Erik was desperate to seem unmoved, but that was nearly impossible with the sensation of her still imprinted upon his flesh. "I think we will take a break for a bit. I…I've been pushing you quite a bit today, I realize, but…well, I don't have much time left with you…." He couldn't say more; there were many other connotations half a phrase away, and with one last feverish glance at her, he abruptly turned and left the room, desperate for air as if he had been suffocating.

Only one glance did she grant to the way he'd gone, to his escape, and then as her own arms embraced her trembling body, she finally allowed her knees to give out with bravery's fall and slid to the floor, huddling in a tight package of small limbs and skirts as the last few minutes tortured her with heavy thoughts, too many and the feelings attached. Above all else came one decisive voice stating plainly and inarguably that she wanted Erik; in spite of every disconcerting emotion his presence brought, she wanted him. Now if only she could figure out how to convince him of it.


	4. Chapter 4

A distance was being employed between them that exceeded the typical teacher and student boundary that was occasionally tiptoed across; this new one was impassable. The rest of her practice time was endured in that manner with Erik being a step away from cold in his instruction; even his praise when she met his expectations was flat and devoid of anything akin to an emotion. It made Christine suddenly certain that she'd lost him entirely.

Supper was equally as awkward and further crushing of her growing hope; it was being squashed with every sullen glance sent in her direction and every snapped reply to any attempt at a conversation. No, no, she wasn't about to let this go as feebly as her usual weakness would have called for. He was going to give her no lead way; she'd have to do something herself. Otherwise come daylight, she'd leave, and they would nearly be on the same terms that they had started with.

Biding her time, she offered to straighten up the kitchen and kept half an eye on the sadness radiating from him as he retired to the living room alone. But still she waited, giving him the opportunity to be lost in his melancholy and practically forget her presence in the house. Yes, it was all a part of the haphazard plan that was forming in sporadic impulses in her mind. Well, if she was going to call upon her building bravery, then she was not about to hesitate over the less pleasant details and if her actions resulted in a fit of rage from him instead, …she'd have to take that chance.

Silent as she could be, she crept into the living room, her eyes locked on his meditative pose in his chair before the fire. She was almost grateful that his mind was so over-laden because he never seemed to hear her approach. On whispered footfalls, she kept beyond his peripheral view and snuck to his chair with one objective fueling her motions. In her head was a fleeting memory of the last time she had done exactly this and the fiery rage she had been victim to as ample punishment, but this time…there would be no surprises to be revealed with her deception. No, she already knew what she was about to uncover, and with its image in her mind's eye as she came behind him, she lifted shaking fingertips. In one fluid motion without ever giving herself the second to regret, she captured that mask and yanked it away.

No surprise creased those deformed features, not when the mask disappeared and the gust from its movement tickled flesh that was unaccustomed to any form of stimuli. He did not even bother to face her, staring fixedly yet at the fire as under his continued apathy, he flatly inquired, "Trying to recall why you hate me so much, Christine? Will an image of this face do that for you, or do you require a rising of my temper as well? Because I am lacking the energy needed to lash out in a fit of rage at present. So please don't hesitate to feast your eyes upon the monster's face, resume your disgust, and then go to bed."

Christine actually took his cynicism as subtle encouragement; when she had been preparing for rants and shouting, how could it be anything else? Edging around his chair with the mask still clutched tightly between her fingers, she let her eyes roam every detail of that face without hesitation, noting how diligently he was refusing to acknowledge her, keeping his expression set and his stare on the fire.

Clenching his jaw even as he spoke, he muttered, "I suppose that tomorrow I shall retake to wearing the gloves since I will now have to once again assuage your disgust and its every flustered response that I will be given. It's a fitting penance really. I deserve it for forgetting what I am to you."

Still not speaking a word, she slowly knelt before him and did not let any demure uncertainty peek through as she rested her palms atop his knees, waiting for him to regard her as she noted how stiff he grew merely at her unthreatening touch.

"Go to bed, Christine," he stated again, unable to quiet the fraction of a surprised waver in his voice. It affirmed what he would rather have denied. "Christine, please. I'm trying to be the rational one between us at the moment; and perhaps you think that proving some ridiculous point by looking upon my face will set everything to right between us, but all you are doing is torturing me. Your concept of retribution and mine are two different things; you seek an amicable relationship with your teacher, and I…well, I will always seek more. So again I demand that you forget what you were after and go in to bed before I misconstrue it and destroy myself yet again. At least be that merciful after all the pain we've caused each other."

But she did not dare move, staring up at every shadowed contour of that face and in turn every one illuminated by firelight. In warm hues, there was no threat, no horror, and without the anger to make it into a masterpiece of terror, there was no lingering trepidation for her. And all she could think over and over again in her head was that she wanted to touch him.

"Christine, are you even listening?" Despite better judgment's insistence, he finally allowed his impatient eyes to rest upon her small shape, and he was entirely shaken by what he saw. Dear God, what he saw! She was just _looking at him_ as if it was such a commonplace thing to do, no disgust, no abhorrence, nothing he'd seen before when his deformity was in plain sight. No, no, _nothing_ he'd seen before _ever_. The emotion in her eyes was…stunning, so much so that he almost could not believe it was real; it was far too beautiful to be inspired by such ugliness. He was so accustomed to bringing only the most horrible of feelings to life unless they were in the music. …But this…; there was nothing here but him, unmasked, vulnerable and bare, but she seemed to be seeing something else, something deeper, something his own soul begged to mirror.

"What…what are you doing?" he stammered, unusually thrown from eloquent speech.

She did not answer him, so certain that words would fail in their adequacy. Edging forward upon her knees, she raised one hand and allowed just its fingertips to graze his mangled cheek from his temple to his jaw, watching his mismatched eyes widen and feeling his body tighten in its shape as if he was suddenly terrified of her and a touch that was as gentle as she could be.

"Stop," he suddenly warned, yet unable to move himself and draw away. But it was to the thrill of his soul singing within that she did not obey him and suddenly spanned the entirety of her small hand to his cheek, cupping it and fitting her palm around its deformation.

Christine was as intrigued as she was compassionate. She had not expected the transparent skin with its sallow indentation to be so amazingly smooth and warm, almost like silk against her, and she chastised her initial impulsive reaction of disgust all of those months ago with her first glimpse of its oddities. Disgust was ignorant.

Erik was desperately trying to read her thoughts when she refused to share a single one, quivering uncontrollably beneath the sweet softness of her fingers, and as they moved in delicate caresses, determined to learn every texture of his flesh, the softest moan slid unbidden from his misshapen lips. "Christine…," he breathed beneath an edge of tears, "why are you doing this, _ange_?"

"I wanted to touch you," she replied simply in equally hushed tone, scooting every inch closer until her knelt body was pressed to his bent legs with no bit of space between.

"Since when do you follow your whims?" he dared to demand. "I've watched you push dozens away because fear wouldn't allow you. I truly had come to believe that you'd never be able to see past its contortions of reality. Fear always made me a monster in your eyes. …What is it that you see now as you look upon your own hand touching what most disgusted you in the world?"

"Erik," she answered plainly. "I see Erik."

"And do you still know disgust for Erik?" he pushed incredulously, half-convinced that he was creating every aspect of this scene in his mind.

As her answer, she slowly got to her feet and leaned close to press a long, held kiss to his sallow cheek, keeping her lips in that place they had so ached to be long enough to catch a fallen tear.

Her actions unnerved every bit of him, throwing emotions into a spiraling vortex within until he could not know which were valid and applicable. Shaking nearly violently, he tightly commanded again, "Stop, Christine."

"Why?" she posed, so near to his cheek still that her breath tickled his flesh and made him shudder.

"Because you don't know what you're doing," he insisted, desperate to fight any more tears that tried to break free and tumble along misshapen flesh. "Must you punish me so mercilessly?"

"Punish you?" she inquired with a dubious shake of her head.

"In the most cruel manner I can imagine," he pushed on, watching with a flicker of disappointment as his accusation made her recoil; he took that as his confirmation. "You're surprised that I found you out; you believed you'd manipulate me so easily. Yes, Christine, touch this monstrosity of a face, _kiss_ its malformations, and use the only thing I have ever wanted from this world to seek your revenge. You want to punish me for how I've deceived you and twisted every set path in your life, …to punish me for loving you. It is the worst transgression fathomable, isn't it? For a creature such as myself to love anyone and foolishly seek it in return. Loving you is the equivalent to torturing you when it has proven to be such a vast interference in your chosen design for your future. You _must_ hate me for the desires of my ignorant heart, and now…. Well, of course you would want to hurt me for the agony I've caused you."

Christine listened to his insistences with a dull ache in her own heart, curling into herself with every shaking breath she forced into her lungs. Even every bit of bravery she possessed wasn't enough to cross the chasm of Erik's constant suspicion. Yes, it would be far easier to accept a lie than the truth if that truth would shake every conviction he held to and alter his own perception of himself. And how could she possibly change his determined mind when every attempt only caused more pain?

In a trembling whisper, she bid, "Why are you so certain that I want to hurt you? Why is it not even a consideration to you that I may genuinely _love_ you?" The word was half a whisper and half an admission, never a full revelation, not when the immediate sound of it brought further skepticism to that unmasked face and growing spite in place of any affection.

"Because," he snapped, "it isn't within your character to act so boldly, Christine. It takes opera roles and an audience to generate your most believable performances; your countenance typically shows its cracks in every weakness you still possess. You aren't brave, and every facet of your current endeavor is as fabricated as your every performance on the stage."

Fabricated…; she hid the sheen of tears that covered the blue recesses of her eyes and ducked her head from his inspection, terrified he'd call her every response equally a lie. It stunned her to realize just how long she had spent as a coward, so long that he couldn't believe her to be anything else. Fear had been her ultimate motivation, jolting her right and left with a power she had naively allowed it to possess, and now that she sought to emerge from its asphyxiation, it was too much of a deviation to be real in his eyes. …And she had no words to convince him otherwise.

"You ridiculous girl," he muttered, desperate not to show her even a hint of his disillusionment as he was so certain that his accusations were valid. "You believed you'd play a game with the Opera Ghost, break his heart in the most heinous way possible, …to pretend that you loved him. It almost amazes me that you would degrade yourself that far to carry it through and _kiss_ this face without displaying any inkling of disgust. I would have never believed you could feign any emotion with such seeming authenticity. My God, I almost believed you!"

Crying softly to herself as she let her long curls tumble about her face to disguise the treks of every deceiving tear, she suddenly spun on her heel and darted toward the doorway. She never reached its escape….

In two long strides, Erik caught her about the waist, drawing her back against his chest despite her futile struggle to break free. He felt the sob that left her, clutching his fisted hands against her lungs and holding tight to that small body with a sudden terror to lose it.

"No," she whimpered weakly, trying desperately not to let herself succumb to the delicious way it felt to be encircled by those strong arms, to know that powerful and frantic heartbeat against her back and yearn for it to be hers so urgently that it made her shake uncontrollably and yield to his grasp without anymore attempts to fight.

"Ah yes," he muttered as he dared to press his bare face against the crown of her head and learn the texture of silk locks upon his cheeks. "Yes, Christine, be true to your character and run away as you always do when the situation overwhelms you. And shall I act within my own character as well and foolishly let you leave me once again? That has been my downfall in my need to please you. Instead, I'll be the Opera Ghost this time and refuse to falter, to simply take what I want and make it mine. Yes, that's it; that will be my character in this new opera we are acting out tonight. I will hold you to your actions and allow you to feel the ramifications; you've brought them upon yourself. And even if you flinch and shrink away from my touch, I will not stop; no, I will not stop until every word you said becomes truth, until you love me, Christine. I intended to be the gentleman and release you from my presence once you played your part and sang for me one last time, but you tempt fire. You dangle before me what I most want, and now I'll take it. …How could I possibly let you go after what you just did? I've _killed_ for merely seeing my face, and you…you dared to touch it. So what am I to do? I think that loving you and keeping you is punishment enough for your follies, a punishment that has no end."

Any tears abruptly halted mid-fall to linger upon her cheeks as she intently savoured his every spoken word, and she shivered down her spine to feel him nuzzle that face against her crown, rubbing its scars into her hair and losing an unbidden moan within its coils. Dragging his misshapen lips in a constant kiss down to the nape of her neck, he sought skin from between tresses and held that kiss in place, feeling her quiver in response and wondering if it was only out of revulsion. His bloated mouth against her skin…, surely it _must be_ revulsion. Revulsion as her reaction when all he could contemplate with any inkling of clarity was that he wanted to taste her. Without a single consideration to consequence, he dared to let his tongue gently trail the smooth speck of uncovered flesh at her nape, his taste buds tingling with the flavor of her flesh.

Christine could not quiet the sharp cry that fell unhindered from her lips and pierced the air, a step away from being genuinely terrified by the vast amount of sensation racing through her veins. How could she willingly be its victim when it was so powerful that it immediately dragged her beneath its waves and attempted to drown her?

Speaking in breathy syllables that tickled their path all the way down her neck, he demanded, "And you wanted to know why I would never consider that you could love me? Here is proof." His voice became a sharp hiss as he accused, "Because when I attempt to discover the pleasures of a lover, you find disgust in my every dared intimacy. …I sincerely doubt that you react to your dashing Vicomte in such a way when his are the lips upon you."

The mere mention of her supposed fiancé was like an intruder into their moment, and forcing her tongue to comply with speech, she gasped out, "He has _never_ made me feel such things."

Grip instinctively tightening around her in unrealistic hopes of fusing her to his body, never to be separated again, he sneered, "Oh no, how could he ever? His perfect face and untarnished existence would never incite disgust from any willing lady. If he were in my place at present, you wouldn't know a single echo of it, but I…. No, I put my hands upon you, and I am rebuffed by your own natural impulses, unwanted in every regard. And I could abandon morals and simply take what I want, but you _still_ wouldn't want me in return."

"That's not true," she insisted with every bit of resolve she had left. One wisp of a thought that if he let her go, he might never touch her again encouraged bravery to act. Dear God, to never know this again! That was unimaginable!

"Oh?" he taunted skeptically, purposely arching the hardened ache of his desire against her soft, yielding frame, searching for more instinctual clues to her real state. The sound she made seemed evidence enough, but then to his own surprise, she leaned firmer back against him, succumbing instead of struggling, and shaken, he harshly demanded, "Is this disgust, Christine?"

"No, no," she whimpered softly, closing her eyes as he dared to lay another kiss to the back of her throat before he urged onward.

"Then tell me what this is. What do I make you feel when I touch you this way?"

"Fire." The word tumbled past her lips before she ever considered its validity, spilling its way free and resounding in its simplicity around them both.

Fire…. With an abruptness that made her stumble, he released her from his viselike hold and stepped around her, desperate for a look into those eyes, for a single hint that she was deceiving him. She was shaking so intensely that he could see the quiver of every uncertain limb, watching her hug her arms about her body where his had been to recapture a stolen embrace. Stepping as close as he dared, he caught her face between his hands and kept her captive with a certain gentleness, making her hold his eye and show him what he wanted.

"Fire, Christine?" he inquired, and she heard the slight edge of desperation in his tone, a desperation to believe. "Look upon this face that you once ran from in terror; look at it and truly see it, and then tell me what its distortions inspire from you. But be forewarned, if you say anything akin to desire as you just did, then I will take you and I will keep you…and I will _never_ let you go again. No more games. No more hesitations. No more running away."

When rapt in the voluminous depths of blue and green that pooled within his eyes, it was impossible to hide and unthinkable to lie. And knowing at that moment that her answer was about to transform every aspect of her life into something entirely new and so longed for that she was half-afraid to take it, she made a decision to leap forward heart-first. Releasing her arms from their futile hold about herself, she mimicked his pose, cupping his face in her palms and watching the subtle savouring her touch brought as it flickered through half-closing eyes.

"Give me one doubt, Christine," he almost begged in a whisper. "One point of suspicion, and this can be over."

"No," she insisted, studying him fixedly. "Why do you want a reason to let me go?"

"Because my love will destroy you," he admitted, the revelation only a secret in his heart. "It's so powerful that it possesses my better judgment. I nearly killed you, if you'll recall, even if that wasn't my intention in the end. I _did_ want to hurt you because you couldn't love me as I love you. And what will happen now if you give me hope and just as quickly smother it when you remember what I am? Do you truly think I will be merciful enough to let you go without consequence? Consequences to loving me…, it's half a horror, isn't it? To love me, you must realize that I want everything you are, and I _won't_ release you once you recall your darling fiancé waiting in the wings."

Her expression never changed from its convicted sculpt in spite of his fears. "You aren't as lost as you think, _ange_. Not when you are the one between us creating an escape. Why must you pose your love as a punishment? It doesn't have to be the horror you've dubbed it, Erik." In the softest whisper in the shared breath between lips, she said, "Maybe I _want_ to give you everything."

"Everything, Christine? Heart, soul, body," he stated straightforward and inarguable. "And I won't let you cower away from allowing me to love you in return."

"I know," she insisted back, unswayed.

Even as he was still seeking an uncertainty he had yet to find, he hesitantly commanded, "Kiss me, Christine."

Almost immediately, she moved to comply, closing her eyes and tilting her face nearer to the distorted one between her palms, but before she reached him, he halted her trek.

"No, open your eyes, Christine," he abruptly ordered.

Open her eyes, know who and what she was about to kiss, about to give everything she was to in one intimate caress. To his surprise, she obeyed eagerly, regarding him through those blue depths and with the slightest crook of a grin upon her anticipating lips.

In the merest gap of space just before lips met, she breathed, "I love you." And then she was kissing him before he could register her admission, before he could consider anything but the unknown contact of her full, pink lips against his bloated, misshapen mouth. Her eyes never left his, equally as swallowed in images of sapphire and emerald and the vast myriad of emotion passing brilliantly along their surface. She saw everything in that one profound stare: love, desire, devotion, forever, and she prayed that he saw a mirror of such affection in her own. Love, love, this was love, and she shivered delight down her spine at the odd yet warm texture of his lips, never knowing regret for her choice. No, she curved her fingertips firmly along his cheeks, and urged on by desire's potent grasp, she gently moved her mouth against his, easily stifling timidity when so vividly faced with his overwhelmed rush of passion, playing almost innocently in his eyes and radiating through her as well with its power.

Erik was allowing her control, determined to leave this as solely her decision without coercion, without threat, but when the only emotions staring back at him were fervent and wanting, he could not stop himself from taking more. His hands left the delicate features of her face, and his arms weaved securely about her small frame, dragging her as close as he could have her, knowing with utter conviction that she would not fight or run. No, she wanted to be there, in his arms, drowning in his kiss, and the reality of it astounded his every previously-assured sense and rattled each from its base. Without patience remaining, he brought a feverish hunger to her continued endeavors, meeting her kiss and daring to taste her as his tongue parted her willing lips and delved within their velvet softness. And it was still to his bewilderment that she eagerly melted against him under his violation, that she slid restless hands into his thin hair and clutched firmly against his skull as if suddenly terrified that he would end this. As if he would end this! He was far too much a victim to even consider it, falling without reservation into his every dream suddenly brought to life even as he knew he was undeserving.

Christine was surrendering at every turn and every motion, burning from within and not caring. How could she ever have run from this? It seemed ridiculous to deny something so deliciously consuming because even in the fear of letting go completely, Erik was there, stable and holding onto her as if he'd never allow her to fall alone. He was the starting point of every spark and the inevitable inferno that would consume her, and she clung to him without a doubt remaining, meeting him desire for desire and shivering as his tongue grazed hers and teased her with his intoxicating taste.

She was making the smallest whimpers of need against his mouth when he suddenly drew back, always holding her hazy stare in his as if giving it solid ground. "I want you," he huskily breathed, his hands fitfully racing up and down her spine in and out of twining curls to mold her body so integrally to his. "Do you understand that, Christine? And I won't force you; I want you without doubt or hesitation in your head."

Coherency was fading and shifting in wisps through her desire-clouded mind, and any trepidation was shrouded somewhere in its recesses. She could only nod her consent, her urgent fingertips trailing his scars with an unceasing sort of curiosity, learning and relearning every contortion and bend, and she noted that he could not stop the shudder her touch brought from attacking his body and hers by default as she was yet pressed so firmly to every plane and shape.

In a desperate command, he hoarsely bid, "Say what you just did before you kissed me. Christine, say it again."

"I love you," she breathed, every emotion openly displayed along her features. "I love you, Erik."

The exhilarating sound of the words almost made him succumb without any other reality, but there was one pinprick of dark in the sheet of pure bliss, and refusing to let it die away, he demanded, "But will you say that you love the Vicomte as well?"

The mere mention of Raoul brought a furrow to her brow and an unwanted coldness that existed even as their heated bodies were pressed tightly together. Without waver, she insisted, "I don't love Raoul."

"Kisses on rooftops would argue otherwise." The bitterness was unavoidable, tainting his voice, his eyes, his every consideration.

"I don't love Raoul," she repeated adamantly. "I _never_ loved Raoul. I used his presence because I was afraid that if I loved you, I would lose myself and everything I've known life to be."

"And now?" he pushed intently.

"Now I see that I am _only_ myself if I am loving you. When you were gone, I was empty, missing half of my own being. I'm tired of hiding from my heart."

"Every word from your lips is like a reprieve from God for my very soul," he muttered with a soft sigh, and that was the moment he quit seeking a flaw in her veneer and believed her words as truth. Doubts would always flutter to life, he knew, but in that instant, she loved him and he could practically read its words from the open books of her eyes. "You love me," he stated and watched the glow of life in her stare as it danced with vivacity. "And you will give me everything, Christine? Without reservation? As I said, I will not force desire upon you."

"Without reservation," she agreed despite the slight shiver to fingers against his face with lingering timidity.

"But you're afraid." Even as he endured every shake to her small frame with her, he sought to encourage them onward rather than halt their progression and arched his hardness firmly against her, prominently declaring what he yearned for and studying her transfixed. "Is it only a fear of the power of this need, …or is it because _I_ am the one causing it?"

Her answer was simply put as she pressed a feverish kiss purposely to the misshapen swell of his upper lip, lingering there long enough to allow the tip of her tongue to barely emerge and graze its blatant distortion as his entire body went rigid against her.

"I have to have you," Erik huskily rasped, unable to recall what rational thought felt like when in the midst of such an intense ache, and before she had the chance to find its bluntness either, he swept her off of her feet, keeping her as fitted to himself as he could, and carried her to his bedroom. And reality never appeared in the background, never even crept in to destroy as it typically did, not when her eyes spoke equal longing and her fitful hands clutched at him, fingertips digging incessantly in the material of his jacket with a yearning to be rid of its obtrusion.

Reality? What reality if this was the one she wanted? She never knew the shadow of a doubt or a consideration to the rest of the world when for so long, she had ached to be in Erik's arms and in his heart. This _was_ her reality. Doubt was irrelevant, but modesty with its conception in innocence…. Well, that left her to tremble when she was set upon her feet in the center of the room, and it stifled boldness with shaking hands and a betraying blush upon her skin to insist its secrets. She was terrified that he would take such revelations in a wrong vein and turn them into rejection, but to her surprise, as he gazed upon their telltale signatures, he gave her the slightest tinge of a grin and stroked his fingers along one heated cheek as if painting its unnatural hue with his motion.

"So innocent," he breathed. "Shall I steal a few of your trepidations at least? My own secret: I am as innocent to these sorts of intimacies as you are." He caught his wanted response in an inkling of calm amidst a current of apprehension. "And yet you blush still. Perhaps I should instead make it brighter and tell you that though I've never indulged these desires, I've envisioned them to no end since the moment I first glimpsed you. It was you, Christine, something inherent in your makeup that inspired them to such unfathomable heights. Such potency terrified me at first because of how easily it steals logic in its spell. I've never known a single emotion I could not have some hand in controlling until I met you. Then I was overcome. Love, desire, need, I've felt them practically to insanity with you as their root cause. And this desire is the most impossible one to endure alone; to burn so intensely and so desperately is truly maddening and makes reason an afterthought."

Christine was nodding her agreement, and victim to that undimmed blush, she whispered, "I desire you the same, Erik."

He wanted to beam in the sheer joy that her admission brought, but he bore one hesitation that appeared inevitably in a bitter twinge. "But you have a fiancé at home. Surely you've felt such things before…_for him_."

"No," she immediately protested, "no, Erik, no, don't think such a thing because it isn't true. I _never_ desired Raoul the way I desire you. Never," she repeated firmer yet. "It's only ever been _for you_."

"For me," he confirmed, thrilling as she nodded and edged closer to his body. "All that you are is mine, just as I am yours, and _no one_ will take that away. And is that what you want, Christine?"

"Yes, _ange_," she vowed without hesitation and watched with widened eyes as he stepped alongside her and lifted his hands with an unavoidable quiver to the clasps down the back of her gown. One after another, they gave way and parted material in their release, down from nape to waist with interfering curls tickling his knuckles as he meticulously worked.

Never a regret, never a second thought did she find as he guided her gown free and to pool at her feet. It wasn't just a gown that she was shedding, but an unwanted skin that for too long had concealed the truth of who she was within her heart of hearts behind its pretty pretense; now with it gone as she stood before the man she was never supposed to love in her underclothes, she felt as if she had been born into being herself, and anxiousness turned to anticipation.

Half under her own assistance, she was freed of corset, petticoat, shoes, stockings; every object abandoning her and leaving her weightless, more trappings of another world surrendered until only pantaloons and chemise remained. He halted there and allowed feverish eyes to race the length of her, distinguishing curves and hints of feminine features, each silhouetted and so perfect that he was almost afraid to uncover them and expose their true brilliance to his undeserving stare. As he lingered in abeyance, her own hands found the silken ribbon at the neckline of her chemise and tugged it loose, watching him with an unuttered question for approval as she lifted the flimsy garment over her head and tossed it aside. Instinct begged her to cover herself again, but it was the voice of the blatant virgin within her and based beneath modesty's ever-present restrictions; though bravery threatened to cower to it, she wouldn't let it and remained frozen in place even if her blush did not dwindle and instead concentrated on his expression as he trailed hazy mismatched eyes over her.

Erik wasn't breathing and was unable to recall the purpose for such a necessary function in a passion-laden mind. His sole thought was that he wanted more skin to feast his senses upon, and without a word, his shaking hands caught the waistband of her pantaloons at her hips before any real touch was ever dared and jerked them down and away as if the piece of material was unworthy to be shielding such exquisiteness beneath it.

"Will you say something, Erik?" she inquired with a flutter of nerves when he had simply returned to his previous stare and scrutiny of her, refraining from a contact she felt was necessary.

Dragging eager eyes back to hers, he breathed, "In all my life, I've never seen anything like you. You are beauty embodied, Christine. I truly only ever thought such perfection could exist in music…when you find the perfect combination of chords and pitches and create something that can move the soul. But you…." As he spoke, he closed the meager gap between them and brought one hand to her tempting body. His fingers were shaped as if they would strike a chord upon a piano's keys, and with that obscure stretch, they landed along her collarbone, spanning from throat to shoulder easily in their reach. "You are a song unto yourself, the most glorious ever composed made up of a lyrical, legato melody that brings tears to the eyes simply to hear it played." His fingertips crossed each other in a seeming passage of silent pitches, pausing in the hollow of her throat before making a trek from her sternum down between her breasts to the flat expanse of her stomach as she shivered beneath every gentle tap of each finger's pad.

To be blessed with that infinite adoration, Christine was overcome with swelling emotion, love, thick and consuming interwoven so intricately within desire's web. Her eyes focused intently on the image of his hand upon her skin, weighing its contrasts yet memorizing its every unknown sensation of chilled fingers and palm and the gliding motion as he brought it over her hips and back up the curve of her waist, following that graceful line and then daring to brush along her breast. The cry that escaped her was innate, the essential answer to the craving of her body, and she did not shy away with her innocence; no, she arched up nearer to that touch, encouraging him through eyes alone for more.

He did not hesitate, catching the full weight of her breast in his palm and letting his fingers trail the hardened tip, thrilling to learn her every unbridled response. Dear God, to realize _he_ was the cause of her desire was overwhelming and almost half a dream to him! In what sort of conscious state could this bliss exist? And yet her warmth, her delicious softness, those things grounded him in awareness and repeated over and over again that she was his.

"I never believed I would have this," he told her sincerely as he edged closer and bent to form kisses along her jaw. "I was so certain it was lost to me forever." His words were whispers against her skin, each its own caress as he nuzzled his one mangled cheek to the satin flesh of her throat. Lower, lower, until his misshapen lips were pressing kisses along her collarbone and onward to her anticipating breast. As he eagerly swallowed its peak within the cavern of his mouth, she gasped and clutched desperate fingers into the thick material of his jacket, abhorring its intruding presence when skin was all she yearned for.

Erik took his time, savouring her every sound as his tongue teased her hardened nipple, and he could not stop his roaming hand as on its own will, it traveled the plain of her stomach and between thighs that timidly parted and allowed him to explore. Gentle in every endeavor, his fingertips barely slid within her, and he shuddered with a desperate moan lost against her breast.

"Erik, please," she whimpered, never realizing that the words had left her lips and had become more than thought. Irrational fear twisted her stomach at the sheer power his unthreatening caresses carried as her body responded without her consideration and entirely beyond her control. But Erik did not cease, did not give her the option of changing her mind as he grazed his fingers within her womanhood, stroking the length of her and steadying her with his free hand as she lightly swayed upon her feet.

"Christine," he whispered huskily against her breast. "You want me." He stated the seemingly unbelievable words for himself as well as for her. "I barely need to touch you, and you're already so wet, so aching."

His fingers found the center of her passion, and as they circled it delicately, she shuddered and clutched tighter to his stability with fisted hands. Every bit of her skin was tingling and burning and yearning so completely for more, stealing uncertainty as his fingertips continued to manipulate her passion, and his ravenous eyes glanced to her face to watch the desire play out with a necessary need to memorize every image to cling to as his for all of eternity.

Erik brought her to fevered heights, caressing intently, and yet before she reached fulfillment, he abruptly ceased and captured her flushed body in his arms, carrying her to his awaiting bed with a desperation to have her.

She was half-hypnotized on the desire and its continuous pull and ache that cried out for him and only him to satisfy its emptiness. As he laid her back upon the cold blankets, she watched him with hazy eyes as he methodically disrobed, racing hungry eyes along her body at every second. She noticed that his fingers shook in their typical grace as they moved from one piece of clothing to the next, and it was that slight trepidation tainting perfection that calmed her in a way that required no words.

"I love you," he suddenly breathed and savoured the way those powerful words affected her, creating the sweetest curve of a smile even in the midst of intoxicating desire.

Loved, wanted, and Christine's tender eyes followed every detail of his body as it came into view with clothing's disappearance. Pale skin, etched muscles, she studied the lengths of his arms, the expanse of his chest with its every carved shape, and her fingers tingled with a need to touch and feel him. Kneeling up, she suddenly scooted to the edge of the mattress and indulged her eager whim to trail her hands along his flesh from shoulder to the intruding waistband of his pants and back again, leaning close enough to graze her lips in fitful kisses to the crease of his neck. Every breath beneath her hands was agitated, every beat of his heart erratically palpitated, and as she once again guided her hands down his torso, she felt him tense and shudder, the softest whimper of need escaping his lips as he laid desperate kisses to her temple.

Pink painted her cheeks and traveled along the surface of her skin, but that was as far as she allowed shyness to go, ignoring the restrictions it threatened to put in place and timidly unclasping his pants with nimble fingers. And he permitted her without a protest, gazing upon her with fiery eyes that could barely fathom the vision of her skin against his, images of his own body that he knew so well seeming completed with hers added into the picture. Her trembling hand was sliding within the open seam of his pants, and he abruptly yanked them down and out of obtrusion, watching her with a silent question all the while, apprehensive of what sort of reaction his protruding erection would gain from her undeniable innocence; he was half-certain that fear would be its undercurrent. Even if his assumption was warranted as wide eyes studied, she brought her hand to his body with only a quiver to betray her and lightly trailed her fingers along the length of him.

A deep gasp tore from his lungs in the instant her skin met his aching hardness, and desperate hands fisted in her loose locks, clinging to them as they ensnared his fingers in their coils. "Please tell me this doesn't frighten you," he begged, allowing her tentative touches as she learned the texture of him. "Christine, please God don't push me away again with your fear."

"I'm not afraid of this," she whispered back, curving her fingers about his vast width as she felt him throb and grow harder yet in her hold. "I touch you, and I burn and ache to feel you inside of me. …Erik, please…."

Her words alone caused a tremor to rack his body, and impatiently, he caught her shoulders between his hands and guided her to lay back on the bed, searching her eyes for a flicker of doubt that never came. Not even as he lowered his body upon hers and skin met skin; no, she only clasped her arms about him and willingly parted her thighs with his gentle urging.

"I love you, Christine," he breathlessly bid, overcome by her warmth and softness beneath him as his hardness barely grazed her, a moan escaping at the end of his vow. Before she could return the sentiment, he entered her in an abrupt thrust as she cried out and burrowed her face against his throat.

"Christine, Christine," he crooned tenderly, stroking her hair as he forced himself to remain still within her and marveled over the delicious wetness surrounding his aching body, over the very fact that they were one being, that she was now his for time, freely and with a wanting that equaled his for everything he had ever yearned to give her. "Oh, _ange_, are you all right?"

The pain had overwhelmed any thought for a long, unbreathing moment as she merely clung to him, refusing even to meet his eye for fear he'd see the tears that had gathered in the corners, collecting beneath closed lids and spilling free of their own accord. But as the acute poignancy subsided, and coherency dared to peek out, then every single contemplation became rooted in all that was him, his weight atop her, his warmth, his skin, his scent, his tentative, almost fear-filled caresses so delicately through curls and along her shoulders, his misshapen lips and their oddly intriguing texture against her temple, Erik, her angel, her only love, joined so deeply to her, a physical manifestation of the bond that already existed between hearts. She suddenly considered herself a fool to have ever run from this intimacy, especially as she now had the wish for it never to end.

Lifting her head from his shoulder, she was desperate to find his eyes and see if he was as overwhelmed as she was by the wonder of this moment, but his concern was tainting any other emotion.

"Oh God, Christine," he breathed as his fingers found tears and brushed them from her cheeks.

She knew that he was expecting her to force him from her and end every attempt at desire, and she savoured his surprise as she instead murmured, "Don't stop, Erik," and gently moved her hips beneath him, experimenting and seeking lingering pain only to find it fading to something too pleasant to be denied.

"Don't stop," she repeated in the instant before his fervent lips met hers, devouring her in a necessary kiss that screamed of love, desire, contrition, exhilaration. He began to move within her, gently at first, always gently, waiting for encouragement for anything more, and as his tongue tasted her, she shivered and arched her hips to match his motion, thrilling at the way he filled and completed her. And when he tore his lips away, he pressed his forehead to hers and showed her a reflection of her own emotions in the depths of mismatched eyes.

"Christine," he whispered within her breath, the only word he wanted to recall as desire kept comprehension held at bay, and he watched within blue pools as clouds of passion became a storm, swallowing her fervent cries in his own breath.

She was eagerly writhing beneath him, her peak so close to her fisted fingers, and as her lids fluttered, he suddenly commanded, "No, don't; don't close your eyes. Please, Christine, I want to see you be overcome and know that _I_ caused you such pleasure."

With the smallest nod of consent, she complied, staring fixedly into that gaze as his every purposeful thrust brought her nearer to the edge. It built and built within her until finally ecstasy came like a sheet of blinding white light that made reality into its own version of heaven. And she never closed her eyes; she let him see all of her in that one shared stare.

"You are so beautiful," he could not keep from whispering, "especially when the pleasure takes you, and to know that that vision is only mine…. For all of eternity, only I will know the exquisiteness of your desire. I am unworthy of such a blessing even as I refuse to let it go."

"Only you, _ange_," she assured with restless fingertips stroking his scarred face. "I'm yours, Erik."

The thought thrilled him to his soul, and catching her hips between his hands, he thrust deep and hard with a possessive wish that being thus joined could leave some visible mark upon her, branding her as his in a manner that exceeded words and vows. His, yes, she was his; a sharp cry fell from his misshapen lips with passion's violent explosion, and desperate arms clung to her as the world shifted in and out of perspective.

A smile touched Christine's lips as she stroked every feature of his face and silently watched his senses languidly return as time lengthened and passed its moments unnoticed in the backdrop.

Raining idle kisses to her fingers as they crossed his lips, still half lost to desire's satisfaction, he bid, "Why have we spent so long away from this place if this is where we were always meant to have been?" Proving his point, he shifted his satiated body still so deeply buried within her to insist at their union and the euphoria drifting through the air. "Have you loved me all along, Christine?"

Her blush suddenly meant guilt as she reluctantly insisted, "I was foolish."

"Have you?" he pushed his question, determined to have an answer and confident that in their current state, she could not run away from his obstinacy.

Hesitantly meeting those penetrating eyes, she tentatively replied, "Yes, Erik, I've loved you all along."

"And yet," he added for her, "you wish you hadn't. The heart makes its own choices, and we are left to scurry along after it. Your heart chose me, but your head denied it at every turn. Is it really so awful a fate? Perhaps it isn't the path you believed your life would take: to love a disfigured murderer." Huffing his sudden discontent with his own musings, he disentangled himself from her, climbing off of the mattress and seeking discarded clothes with hands that still shook in spite of his flickering melancholy, fingers that yearned only to touch her again.

Chilled where he had been against her as if only a contact of skin and skin could produce heat at its essence, she grabbed at the bed's blankets and drew them to her shoulders, watching him steadily all the while and contemplating what words she could say to ease his mind. Finally with a conceding sigh, she insisted, "Erik, I love you; why is that not enough?"

He had been fumbling over shirt buttons when midway he spun about to face her, ignoring the immediate ache in his heart simply at the vision of her in his bed, and snapped, "Because you don't _want_ to love me. You do; Lord help you, but if it had been an option and heart had not forced it upon you, loving me wouldn't have been your choice. No, if heart had no coercion, you would have chosen the Vicomte over and over again, and he is everything I can never be."

"That's not true!" she suddenly protested with a vehemence that surprised even her in its desperation.

"Isn't it?" As he doubted so fanatically, he sat on the edge of the bed and faced her with fire playing along contorted features, the very image she had once shunned of rage and distortion in one. This time she did not even flinch.

"I love you," she repeated sternly. "I've _always_ loved you. The Vicomte has never been even a passing consideration to me because he cannot make me feel what you do."

"You ran to him, professed love to him, spent the past six months _engaged_ to him," Erik argued back, yet not a word swayed her.

"And all along beneath it all, I _loved you_. Raoul was merely a means to cling to my own fear and denial." One of her hands left the blanket's cocoon and delicately cupped his cheek, and she took it as a minor victory when he did not pull away. "I came back here knowing I loved you after six months of being dead inside without you. Please don't push me away now that you know my heart so completely."

Tilting his face, he set a timid kiss into her palm; no matter the depth of intimacy they'd only just shared, any touch to his disfigurement still left him reeling and in awe of her existence. "Then let's leave this place, Christine. You and I together. We can go anywhere you like, someplace where we can just love each other without interference, without pain."

"But your opera-"

"I don't care!" he passionately insisted, catching her face between his hands. "I don't care; the opera was compensation because I couldn't have you."

"You've spent your entire life being denied every bit of recognition you deserve-"

"Recognition? If I have your love, it doesn't matter."

"But it does," she argued just as convicted. "You deserve to see your opera performed on the stage; it's brilliant, Erik. And you have me; that won't change if we remain here until after it's over." Before he could utter the protest he was forming, Christine added, "You love the music. It's practically an image of your soul in staves and notes, and I won't be selfish enough to take away from you the chance for the world to hear its exquisiteness. You cannot tell me that you haven't fantasized it to the last detail, the orchestra and its every swell, voices raising to the rafters in every melody."

"You singing it for me," he added with a subtle nod. "This opera is equally yours; I wrote it to make you shine as well."

"It was meant to be you and I, wasn't it?" she inquired as she stroked his cheek. "You wrote it with yourself as Don Juan; that passionate duet was always supposed to be ours. Piangi will be a pitiful substitute."

The lightest grin curved the corners of his misshapen lips. "The sacrifices of an artist for his work," he justified. "Imagining myself in the role and singing with you instead of that overweight deviant who carries quite the ego along with his round belly." His fingertips were trailing idly along the features of her face, cherishing every nuance discovered. "Of course it was meant to be you and I, and in my mind, you sang it with all of the passion that you just gave to me, my every fantasy brought to life." Following the line of her throat, he slid his fingers beneath the boundary of the blanket and continued down the smooth skin of her chest. "And if we stay and perform my opera, will I be tortured and have to watch you continue your charade of an engagement with the Vicomte?"

She was reluctant to answer, especially with Erik's hand on her, tracing random paths until it was gently stroking her eager breast, but closing her eyes beneath beaming desire, she replied, "He'll come after you if I don't; he's already made threats on the subject. He's one step away from following through on them. If he should learn that I've chosen you after all I've put him through, he'll be out for blood and death."

"You mean that you don't want _me_ to kill _him_," Erik concluded for her as wave after wave of hazy passion ebbed within him.

"I don't want you killing each other," she corrected, her voice breaking off with a small cry. His fingers were manipulating her nipple, making it harden desperately with a growing need for more. "Erik, if you don't stop…."

"What? Tell me, Christine," he commanded. "Will you beg me to take you again? Will you scream for it?" His free hand drew the blanket down and out of his way as he suddenly leaned close and caught that audacious nipple between his lips, savouring her sharp cry of delight as she arched closer to his tempting mouth. One long kiss, and he pulled back enough to insist against her skin, "You're _mine_, Christine! Do you truly think I could bear to know that he would still presume to have the right to touch you and kiss you as if you were _his_?"

"Please, Erik," she whispered back with her remaining bit of coherency. "I'm _yours_; I love _you_. And after the opera is over, we'll leave and none of this will matter anymore."

"I don't want him touching you," he retorted, claiming her lips in a quick kiss.

As he pulled his mouth away and stretched out his body on the mattress beside her, she attempted, "Pretend it is another performance; that's all it will be to me, another acted role. You're going to watch Piangi onstage with me, touching me in a far more passionate manner than I'd ever allow the Vicomte."

"I never had to vie with Piangi for your affections, so I call your comparison irrelevant." Pressing his length to hers, despite barriers between skin, he knew she'd be able to feel how desperately he was yearning for her again. "If I have to see the Vicomte kiss you again, I will kill him without a qualm."

Christine was unsure that he was teasing, not with such a sensitive issue, but even with the hint of wariness, she bid, "I will play my part with minimal interaction. After being here with you like this, it would be only torturous to know any kiss but yours ever again. How you make me burn, _ange_!"

Thrilling with her words, he began to yank away everything in between flesh, tearing with desperate fingers that ached to know only her satiny smoothness. "And so you'll play a role for the rest of the world all the while carrying on a clandestine and illicit affair with the notorious Opera Ghost right beneath their noses. And I will sustain myself on that until final curtain call, but so help me God, if darling Raoul expects too much and dares to cross too many of propriety's barriers, covert is gone, and you'll be lucky if I remember not to follow through and kill him. I am a jealous man, Christine. I don't simply share what is mine without consequence."

She could form no reply, not with his teasing fingers moving between her legs to eagerly delve within her silken folds. All she could do was mutter nonsensical sounds and cling to him once again with longing hands, begging in every uninhibited arch to match the motion of his probing fingers. And even as the threat of murder hung overhead, she knew no hesitation as he made love to her; she only fell into a web of love and desire so thick that its tendrils blurred reality from ever intruding.


	5. Chapter 5

It was the worst torture imaginable to leave Erik's bed at dawn, and he did not make it any easier with continued frenzied caresses to change her mind, dragging her back into his embrace at every chance. He wanted to create a blatant memory in her head to encourage her bravado to remain intact, apprehensive that her courage could stay immune to the Vicomte's advantages and charms. For too long, Erik had been victim to her incessant trepid weaknesses of character; he was adamant that he would force her strength to fix its hold if he must, and suddenly his previous fantasies of threatening Raoul's existence were not nearly as farfetched.

Just before she could exit the catacombs through her dressing room mirror and leave his presence, he captured her firmly against him one last time, scowling discontent as he muttered, "Too many layers. How I ache only to feel skin! If we were below in the house, you would be on the verge of being bare to my whims."

Her eyes beamed with such a possibility, and she temptingly arched her hips against his already eager body. "And how I would willingly accommodate each and every one if only I didn't have to attend rehearsal and desire Piangi instead. You truly should appreciate and repay every trauma my subconscious must endure for your opera and its inspired portrayals."

"I intend to," he vowed as urgent fingers yanked his mask free and exposed anticipating lips that immediately found the alluring crease of her throat. "And I also intend to be the very impetus of those inspired portrayals. I want only my vision in your head, as that was my very muse to create every salacious detail."

"Indeed," she replied, and even as she sought to seem provocative and bold, that betraying blush still tainted her cheeks. But she stifled its power and only kept a shy grin as she softly bid, "And may we act out its scenes as they were meant to be later?"

"God, yes!" he enthusiastically exclaimed between continued kisses. "But what excuse will be fabricated for your awaiting fiancé?"

Cringing with the thought, Christine wearily replied, "I have to go home with him."

"No, you don't," Erik stated flatly, still brushing his lips along her throat.

But she was shaking her head. "I've been staying at the de Chagny mansion under his insistence since the night a chandelier almost fell on my head. He would be suspicious if I suddenly refused." Even as fire seared her skin beneath the branding motion of his mouth, she reluctantly bid, "I have to go."

With a petulant huff, he released her from his embrace, wondering if she knew just how intently he had had to focus to make his arms comply. "And now I must live without you once again, longing from afar, watching through mirrors…. After I've had a taste of paradise, it will seem a bitter reality to face."

"It's temporary," she reminded, catching his scarred cheek in her palm. "I promise you, Erik. I love you, and soon, when the opera is over, we'll be together without walls and mirrors in between."

"Without _Vicomtes_ in between," he added, turning his face to kiss her palm. He was suddenly certain that the one night he had had with such idle caresses against untouched flesh had intoxicated him so much so that he was going to feel a step from death's door without them. Such touches were the very inspiration of life. "Promise me instead that _he_ won't change your mind." The fear was churning his soul and did not lessen even as she regarded him absurdly.

"Of course not," she vowed earnestly. "I told you I've loved you all along, and Raoul never changed my heart."

"Not your heart, but your courage. It is not an easy path to love me; I realize that. And when the world is against us and filling your ears with nonsense, it can seem so much simpler to give up and follow the Vicomte instead as you've done often enough before." His fingers tucked loose curls behind her ears as he gazed at her in open adoration. "I can't help but be terrified that I'll never have this again."

Doubts, always doubts, but she only grinned with as much tenderness as she could muster and replied, "I am far stronger than you're giving me credit for. Need I remind you that I was the one to come back to you without coercion, just as I always will."

Believing her inherently was still beyond him, but he accepted enough in her admission to finally reach for his mask and break away. "When the opera is over…," he repeated as a promise, and with one last shared look, he turned and disappeared back into the shadows of the catacombs, carrying a certain sadness that stung her with its reverberations.

It took a concentrated effort to leave the safety of the darkness and return to her own world, but on trembling legs, she emerged through the mirror, feeling as if she had just traveled a great distance and had traversed from fantasy to reality in a meager five steps. And reality was as stark and cold as it always had been to her, overwhelming in its quick encompassment, stealing any lightness she had known in Erik's presence and replacing it with dread. Nothing made sense in this world; no, it was as if its every detail was not hers and every object was foreign. She belonged in shadows, not the light.

With a soft sigh, she glanced one last time to her mirror with an unindulged urge to disappear back into its recesses before she finally willed her legs to carry her out into a crowded hallway, bustling as always with singers, dancers, all of the backstage help, everyone heading in different directions to different destinations, all with their paths in mind while Christine felt utterly lost.

"Christine!"

It was the one voice she didn't want to hear, floating over the din, and before she could distinguish its source, her arm was caught and she was guided beyond the throng to an empty corner.

"Raoul," she attempted, forcing the façade to overtake her heart and root itself so firmly in her eyes that no crack could be seen.

"Darling, I've been worried half out of my mind about you!" he gushed, hugging her quickly, and she allowed his embrace without recoil.

"Whatever could you possibly have been worried about?" she inquired lightly and formed a grin as he met her eye again. "I told you that I intended to travel to Perros."

"I know, and it made me near sick to let you go alone."

"You're being ridiculous," she pointed out just as she had with her initial argument of her case three days before. "You act as though I have threats of death hanging over my head!"

"That madman-"

"That madman," how she detested using that very term, "commanded that we perform his opera. We are complying and doing that. I see no reason to worry when we are giving him what he wants." What Erik wanted…, one consideration threatened to undo her charade as she guiltily shoved images of pale skin and roaming hands deeply into her mind and beyond immediate interference.

Raoul just shook his head and swallowed back an argument that would only be pointless, instead stating, "I thought you'd return home this morning."

Home…, _his_ home. "I have rehearsal; you knew that."

"Yes, but…," another argument dropped. "Well, did you at least find someplace to practice while you were in Perros? You were so worried about learning your role before you left."

Acting skills called upon, she lied without waver, "Yes, the parish priest allowed me to use the piano in their church building. It was decently in tune, and I was able to have everything memorized for the run this morning. I'm sure the stage director will be on a rampage if anyone is unprepared."

"Yes, and your managers besides; you are performing this opera in two weeks." He spoke the news so calmly and with such knowledge that Christine immediately knew that there was more to the story.

"Two weeks? Isn't that a bit soon?" she pushed, watching him critically at every moment.

"They want this ordeal over as quickly as possible; no one can begrudge them that. And considering all they'll be putting into jeopardy with this scheme of theirs…, well, it's understandable." At her continued glare, the Vicomte shrugged nonchalantly as if his news was inconsequential and told her, "I've been working with them these past few days that you've been gone to devise a foolproof plan. That opera demon will never get past us now that the details are set."

Her breath stilled in her lungs; it was the only telltale sign to insist anything amiss. Even her tone remained unwavering as she kept empty eyes and asked lightly, "What are you going to do?"

"That's not important; you'll be safe. That's all that matters," he quickly insisted. "You're going to be late for rehearsal if you don't hurry along."

She nodded so believably that he never suspected as he kissed her forehead lightly and sent her in the direction of the stage. She was suddenly grateful to be beyond his presence as the weight of his words landed upon her shoulders. A plan to capture Erik had been discussed before she had left; now it was obviously in progression, and she was being denied its finer points. It amazed her to consider that below ground with Erik, she was an equal, a partner on the same plane as he was, but in this world of reality, she had been dropped below every other rank and was only a mindless doll, supposedly without an ability to think for herself, pulled along with everyone else's courses and not allowed to pose an argument. And how long would she have continued on that path, not even living her own life, had she not been brave enough to let her heart act for once?

Rehearsal was tedious; the opera was difficult, and the cast was not above letting their dislike be known. A musical run became extensive blocking; with only two weeks until the performance, as much needed to be accomplished as possible. Christine felt like she was not even permitted a moment to breathe, and all the while, Raoul was present, an observer and guardian in the back of the theatre, burdening her further with every look from his blue eyes. How heavy of an emotion guilt was! And it tore at her with an incessancy that never dulled.

Further putting its toll on her poor heart, she saw nothing of Erik, not as the cast was released for the day and Raoul took his place at her side and steered her to his awaiting carriage as if his name and family crest were etched upon her as well. And it was suddenly as if the past days in Erik's home had never even happened at all, not once she was back in the de Chagny mansion, acting the same role that the last six months had boasted, the sugarcoated, gullible fiancée without thought or emotion that was not controlled by the Vicomte's world and wants. Just as she had then, she felt stuck, trapped, and to think that that could have been her life!

If she had ever doubted her heart's desires, conviction was hers. Erik had feared she'd falter; well, one night of forced naïveté had left her insisting desperately to herself that every bit of this was temporary. Add to her impatience, a string of ventures avoiding the Vicomte's affectionate touches and sought-after kisses. It was exhausting!

From one role to another, and Christine spent the next morning onstage, reworking blocking, including steps for a desire-laden duet that left her longing for Erik with every bit of heart, soul, and body. Her inner ear heard Erik's voice singing so tantalizing as Piangi fumbled through every provocative line, scowling on occasion and refusing to acknowledge the true genius of the music he was massacring at every note.

By the time she was allowed to escape even if it was only to be fitted for her costume, she was ready to give up altogether in this ridiculous ploy and run to Erik with open arms and a frantic begging to be taken away. If only! But say what he would, she knew how much the opera meant to him, and she would suffer to give him something after taking so much away from him.

The seamstress was just finishing, collecting her wares and the skirt Christine had been trying on. Christine was almost impatient for her to leave and grant her at least a moment of unoppressed thought as she changed. The instant the door clicked closed and she was alone, eager arms caught her before she could dare seek her gown, and she was dragged without struggle backwards within the open mirror and into the shadows.

"You truly believed I'd be able to endure watching you practically bare right in front of me without touching you," Erik breathed against her ear, catching the material of her chemise in his hand as he urgently cupped her breast. "Dear Lord, Christine, I've missed you!"

Her only protest to his assault came as he abruptly released her to set the mirror back into place and shut out reality's world. The only light in shadows was that which poured in from her dressing room on the opposite side, and it barely pooled around their shapes as it intruded into their darkness. "And how often have you watched me as I've changed my clothing in that very room, I wonder," she demanded with the hint of a genuine smile she could not conceal. Feigning a fraction of annoyance, she stepped to the two-way glass and peeked in, noting how clear every image from his side would be.

Erik was only watching her, savouring every silhouetted curve of her body against the thin silk of her chemise and pantaloons and half a breath from tearing their presence away completely. "You need not feel violated," he offered. "I can recall each and every time, and you were never anymore bared than this. It always left me having to imagine the rest. Now that I know the true beauty beneath the silk, I can tell you that you far exceed every fantasy I could conjure."

She faced him with the light streaming about her shape while he was the outline in the shadows, and there was not a single hesitation as she approached and met him there, reaching necessary fingers to tear the mask away and find his face. "And from the other side of the glass, I would have never known that you were watching me."

"Desiring you," he corrected, caressing with eyes alone.

"That hardly seems fair. You were desiring me all along, and I was entirely unaware of it."

Fisting his hands at his sides to yet keep from touching her, he added, "And what would you have done if you had known? At the time, you would have run in horror to your fiancé."

"Perhaps," she conceded, and leaning on tiptoe, she grazed her lips temptingly across his in a loosely-defined kiss. "At the time," she reiterated, "when fear would have been guiding me, fear for things I did not understand. But now…."

"Now…," he urged, knuckles taut with control.

"Now I know the sorts of things I want, and I know what it is to desire. And realizing how much you wanted me all this time makes me ache to have you and remind you that it need not be only a fantasy anymore. I'm yours." She purposely spoke the words she knew would make him shudder with delight and would easily shatter his control as, true to prediction, his hands darted out and clasped the hem of her chemise, yanking it upward fitfully. Though she allowed him and felt the silken material drag along her skin as it was guided away, she muttered half-heartedly, "I have to return to rehearsal."

No heed was paid to her words as Erik stared in awe at her body as enthralled as the first time he'd been blessed with a glimpse of its perfect form and features. With an unhindered moan, he caught her breasts in his hands, teasing their eager tips and studying her every overcome reaction with intrigued provocation. She willingly melted at his touch and forgot that any words existed to make him stop. Why would she want to make him stop? She was a step away from begging him _never_ to stop as he continued with fevered caresses upon skin that had been longing so desperately for his.

One tug rid her of her pantaloons, and as his eager fingers parted her legs and slid within her, he moaned his desperation. "You're so wet, so ready for me. None of my fantasies ever included the incredible way you would feel to the touch, how your heated wetness would burn my fingertips and make me ache to bury myself within you."

Her hands were desperately unbuttoning his shirt, impatient for more, and he ceased touching her only to comply and toss away barrier after barrier for her eager exploration. As she brushed fingers along his skin, scooting closer and closer to his body, he was opening his jacket and covering an expanse of the hard, stone floor.

"This will have to do at present," he muttered, sitting on the ground and pulling her down upon his lap. She did not deny him; she only clutched her arms tightly around his neck, crying out as he grasped her hips between his hands and guided her downward to enter her abruptly.

Desire was desperate between them and necessary as if months had past since the last time they had been joined as one, and all Erik could consider was how much he needed her and these sensations to feel alive. She seemed to inspire life with every touch and caress, in the fervent kisses she was burrowing with her cries against his neck, in the arms that clutched him to her as if he was an integral appendage of her own survival. His Christine, his love, and encouraging a frenzied rocking with her captive hips, he sought to please her, savouring every muffled sound of her passion against his skin.

"Christine," he gasped against her ear, "have you any idea how it amazes me to have you this way after so long envisioning it? I watched you so often just feet from this spot and a mirror away; and I imagined grabbing you as I just did and making love to you, and always you welcomed me without fear or disgust. And now that that is my reality, I can hardly accept it as truth. I have loved you since the first time I saw you, and I yearned to drag you into the shadows with me, away from that other world. I knew that you were made to be mine."

Her agreement was lost in a series of cries as she rode him to her fulfillment, finding his misshapen lips with hers as the ecstasy left her breathless and unable to vow the devotion swelling within her heart. Instead with the words twisting and twirling upon her tongue, she tasted him, exchanging professions of adoration in pirouettes with his own eager tongue, a conversation more eloquent than speech could pose. His mouth was a warm cavern of similar oaths and a loyalty that was hers alone, and as his misshapen lips yielded and followed the lead of her perfect ones, he bore no doubt at that moment that he was loved.

When pleasure came for him, he weaved both arms about her, kneading urgent fingers between silken locks, and drew his mouth away to whisper her name over and over again as the most beautiful word he knew in existence.

"I don't want to let you go," she bid back in soft tones that echoes breathily off of the stone walls, and she hugged herself so firmly to his body that no gaps between skin could exist.

"Say the word, and I'll carry you away from here," he bid, his breath stirring the wispy curls at her temple, "just like this, skin to skin, body to body, heart to heart, and I will keep you this way forever."

It would have been the resounding reply of her heart to say yes, but with a reluctant sigh, she wearily drew away and rose on shaking knees. "I have to get back before Raoul comes searching for me."

Merely the sound of his rival's name on her lips caused a reaction from his temper, and as he watched her pull on her underclothes with quivering fingers, he demanded, "Is this truly for the opera, Christine, or is it because you are loath to break his heart?"

Christine halted in her actions as she was tying her chemise into place and met his fiery glare with a flicker of hurt in hers. "That will be the end result: breaking his heart. Forgive me if my current impetus is preserving _your_ life and putting one less threat on your shoulders. Better to bear the hatred of a jealous suitor than a rejected one. If Raoul knew that I've already chosen you, he would come after you."

"Better sooner than later, if that is to be the ending anyway," he corrected in return apathetically, jerking on his pants.

"No, no, no," she insisted back, "don't you see yet that there can be more than one ending to the story?"

Her query intrigued him, piquing ideas and taming fury as he inquired back, "Have you something particular in mind, Christine? A different ending altogether?" A mischievous gleam flickered in scheming eyes, and it was so shocking in its appearance that he chuckled lightly to observe it. "You _do_ have some sort of concocted plan."

"Raoul thinks that I am ignorant," she filled in matter of factly.

"How dare he?" Erik teased, catching her arm and drawing her close again.

"How dare he indeed. His compulsion to play the hero of the tale has made him intent on keeping me uninformed as to the revised details of the plan he has created with the managers, the plot of which centers around using your opera and my performance to bait you into their trap."

No surprise appeared on his unmasked face as he revealed, "I concluded as much by their willingness to perform it. I am not a fool either. They are all out for my blood."

"And the instant Raoul learns that you have my heart, he will be first on your list of enemies."

"And so your suggestion would be? What, Christine? That he never learn the truth?"

"No, of course not, but that when he does, it is already too late to change anything." Nodding decidedly, she declared, "And we disappear before any of them have the chance to come after us. …The night of the opera, I'll sing, and then I'll come to you. …And we'll leave this place together before anyone realizes that we've gone."

He weighed her words carefully and did not dismiss them as nonsense as he considered the random possibilities in his head. But one point bothered him immensely. "And you are telling me not to attend the premiere of my own opera, the one you've been so set on performing _for me_."

"You don't need to be in attendance to listen. You could hear it from practically anywhere in the opera house."

"Yes," he agreed sarcastically, unable to contain the bite in his tone, "through walls and mirrors." Gesturing frantically at the mentioned object and the empty dressing room on the opposite side of its barrier, he insisted, "I've watched my life go by through boundaries, everything I could never be or have. This is _my_ opera, and they will take that from me as well."

"It would keep you safe," she attempted to protest, but he was already releasing her and turning to finish dressing.

"You need to get to rehearsal," he said without emotion that she could decipher, and he refused to regard her, not until he heard her enter her dressing room, leaving his world.

Through the open mirror, Erik sadly watched her, unwilling to look away as she pulled on her gown; a doorway, he reminded himself, not a brick wall. No, it need never be an insurmountable barrier again, and after so long confined to one side, why was he foolishly creating new walls in between?

Without a word or explanation, Erik stepped behind her in the room, and as if it was only so natural to do so, he began to reclasp her gown, closing each button from her waist to her nape, relieved that she did nothing but allow him, remaining frozen in her spot and shivering a bit as he purposely added a long caress of his fingertips up the back of her throat.

"Christine," he said gently, "I-"

"Christine, are you-?"

Gaping horror, Christine faced her opening dressing room door and Raoul's widening, enraged eyes as they focused solely on Erik.

"Monster!" the Vicomte hissed.

And as she flipped about to Erik's reaction, she noted with a wave of guilt that he was still unmasked and his scars were on display to Raoul's disgusted glare. The Opera Ghost, disfigured and ugly, a murderer and demon as reputation held, and the gleaming fire in his mismatched eyes laid the threat thick in the air.

"Please," Christine muttered beneath her breath, and for one instant, Erik's malicious stare shifted to her, reading the unspoken command she was desperate for him to accept and unsure if he was as willing as she wanted him to be to concede.

Practically growling with perturbation, Erik coldly snapped, "I will see you soon, my love," and with one more fixed, seething look at the Vicomte, he turned and fled through the mirror, closing it to intrusion as Christine played her own part and deliberately darted into Raoul's arms before the Vicomte could dare pursue.

"Oh, Raoul," she whimpered dramatically, "thank heavens you came looking for me."

On the opposite side of the glass in a world of fantasy and shadows, Erik observed the scene with jealousy spiraling in his gut as the dashing Vicomte enfolded Christine in his arms and smoothed gentle fingers through her hair. All he could consider was that she had only just been in _his_ arms and _his_ hands had been in her hair and _his_ desire had been inside of her. Impulse begged him to crash through the mirror's glass and yank her away with furious arms. And wasn't it that very same voice's urging that had convinced him to cut the ropes holding the chandelier in its last appearance? Jealousy was the most consuming vice he'd ever known; it spurred madness on its heels.

"Come on, darling," Raoul was saying, drawing her toward the door with always a wary eye on the mirror. "I'm taking you home."

"But rehearsal-"

"How could you even consider remaining when the devil just tried to abduct you?" Raoul harshly demanded, ignoring the quick glance she cast back at the mirror.

"He wasn't…." Christine knew Erik was watching, but she applied her façade to perfection and gave nothing away. "I mean if you want your plan to work, then I must be at rehearsal to learn my part. Raoul, you must continue as intended; you must catch him before he comes after me again. …Please…, I'm so afraid." Never another look was granted to her invisible audience behind the mirror; no, she was too sure it would sway her.

"Christine," Raoul worriedly bid, "but are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I just want this to be over."

"Of course, my darling."

Gently touching his cheek with the sheen of tears in her eyes, she urged, "Then I must remain for rehearsal."

Erik's eyes were fixated on her little fingers against the flawless, unmarked flesh of the Vicomte's cheek, and his fists tightened at his sides with a rage so powerful that he felt sick on it.

"All right, Christine," Raoul conceded, "but I will not let you out of my sight again."

Though the disappointment lanced through her immediately with a realization that clandestine encounters were halted, she nodded with a smile that seemed to only show relief and let Raoul lead her from her dressing room without another word.

Staring after them, Erik was assaulted with such a plethora of emotion that he could barely rationalize through it. He knew the game she was playing, and yet he was still unsure if he himself wanted to play along with her. There was too much at stake for even one fumble on any of their parts, and when death was a viable outcome, it added quite a risk in the background. And it was one chance he was unsure he was willing to take.


	6. Chapter 6

Two weeks…. Two weeks should never seem an unending period of time, especially when one was so preoccupied that there was barely a minute left for reflective thought. But Christine knew the passing of every cruel second even if the vast majority were spent onstage acting someone else's life. Two weeks alone were far more difficult to endure than six months alone had been, now after knowing what it felt like to freely love Erik. She was mourning and in a grief for her very soul, and she was certain that beyond her attempted façade, Raoul must have sensed it as well. His suspicion likely accounted for his reluctance to leave her side; she was _never_ without him, it seemed. Always on guard, always attentive to every sound and portent; if she had to be backstage for any reason, he was practically in her shadow, ready for attack. He had had the managers reassign her to a different dressing room and had had the full-length mirror within the new room taken out as a precaution. That had been a compromise on her part when Raoul's initial desire had been to also disassemble the one that led down to the catacombs and go after Erik already. She had used tears and a ridiculously overdone breakdown to convince him not to do it, as she created exaggerated lies of the traps and perils Erik had set below for anyone who dared intrude. Her hysteria must have been plausible enough, for he had never mentioned the mirror again or any attack beyond his impending scheme.

Death threats and operas and life-changing events, and she was so consumed in an agony of longing that none of it could compare. With the Vicomte as a constant companion, she never saw Erik, not even his shape in dark corners, and even though she told herself that it was due to her own convincing, part of her was surprised that he had actually chosen to go along without argument, half-expecting to be swept off into shadows at any given point. And would that truly have been so terrible? When those shadows had hands and lips to devour her and a heart so completely hers that just a recollection of the adoration always in his eyes made her ache with a desperation to see its beaming brilliance?

It was the night before the performance, and Christine had once again used exhaustion as a valid excuse to retire to her room in the de Chagny mansion and avoid Raoul's presence and any attempted embraces that would have come from it. Two weeks shirking free of his hold and ducking away from kisses with one contrived defense after another. Only twice had she been caught unaware, two affectionate kisses from a man who sincerely loved her, and all she'd been able to consider was the other man who loved her and how she was betraying _him_ even if she had not consented to do so. She tried to tell herself that it was another role to play and that as an actress, kisses were constantly and rather flippantly granted onstage, but it was almost impossible to detach herself and not know that they were Raoul's lips against hers. After learning the power of Erik's kiss, she had to wonder why she had ever foolishly run from it when the alternative gave nothing but the tangible reality of lip to lip, no surge of fire, no soul-consuming fullness within. No, Raoul's lips weren't Erik's, and how could she have endured the rest of her life with only mundane kisses and hollow embraces? It seemed a ridiculous means of denying her soul.

Clothed in her nightdress, she was at her vanity mirror tying back half of her curls when a knock at the door startled thought from her head. Jittering in her every step, she scurried to answer, already with an idea who her visitor would be, and as suspected, the instant she opened the door, the Vicomte was striding within her room as if it was his right to do so without an invitation.

"Raoul? …Is something wrong?" she asked with a wave of apprehension that peeked through the fatigued cracks that came from playing an unwanted role for far too long.

"I wanted to check on you," he insisted, but she remained skeptical and read the more he did not say.

"I'm fine," she retorted in an attempt to catch him in his lie. "But tired, and with the performance tomorrow, I need to rest." It was an urging to leave, and the door held yet open by her hand was further inclination.

To her annoyance, he caught her by her shoulder and guided her back into the room, closing the door to any other intrusion as her frantic mind sought some other way to rid herself of his presence.

"Raoul," she tried with an unusual sternness, "I really must go to bed. Tomorrow is going to require every bit of strength I have."

"Tomorrow," Raoul repeated distantly and captured her hands in his, forcing her to meet his eye. "I wanted to be sure that you understood what's going to happen. This is not going to be a typical opera performance."

"No, you're hoping to catch a murderer," she stated for him and knew her true perturbation was being readily displayed.

"No," he corrected, "we're hoping to _kill_ a murderer."

There was no shock to his revelation; Erik's assumptions on the subject had prepared her for it, but she was optimistic that any plan Raoul had would fail. "Do what you wish, Raoul. All I know is that I must sing tomorrow night, and I need to indulge in some decent sleep before that. Will you please leave?"

But he hesitated yet, rubbing her knuckles with his thumbs as he said, "I just want you to understand that I'm doing this for you, because I love you."

It was ironic to her. He was justifying murder with love, and yet Erik was allowed no excuse or defense for his own crimes. Why then was Erik the condemned one between them? "I never asked you to kill anyone for me," she said coldly.

"I want you to be safe, Christine, and after this is over, I want us to leave this place and go on with our lives…once he's dead and can't come after you again." Drawing her acquiescent form close, Raoul wrapped his arms around her and softly bid, "I know you've been afraid of that monster for so long, and after seeing myself what he truly is, I can only imagine the horror he put you through before you told me about him all of those months ago. My God, Christine, his face!"

She cringed in his embrace, purposely setting her cheek against his shoulder so he would not see the rage twisting within her. Erik's face…, Erik's face was hers, and as far as she was concerned, Raoul had no right to have ever seen its distortions.

Rubbing the length of her back with his hands, the Vicomte insisted, "When this is over, you'll be safe, and he'll never be able to get to you again. I promise you. I realize how awful this situation has been, and you've had to hold your head up and be brave as you sing his dastardly opera. I have been so proud of your spirit. Be strong one more time and get through the performance tomorrow, and I promise, I will be the brave one between us from then on."

Had she loved Raoul, his sweetly-spoken offer would have seemed like an endearment, but considering how long she had suffered as weak in his presence, it now only seemed another attempt to keep her ignorant and naïve as the Christine he preferred, the one whose heart he thought he could control.

"As you said," she softly replied, "it's nearly over. I will do what I must to get through every trauma in store."

"That's my dearest girl." Urging her back, he bent to kiss her, and in an effort to pacify him, she permitted one kiss before pulling free with that irrepressible wave of guilt ebbing within her chest.

"Please, Raoul," she pushed. "I need to try and sleep."

"Of course." With an affectionate smile that she weakly attempted to return, the Vicomte set one more kiss to her brow. "I love you, Christine."

Thankfully, he did not wait for her to lie; he left her bedroom, closing the door behind himself, and Christine's bravado fled her with his retreat. Yes, she reminded herself, it was almost over, every bit of this pretense and every deception attached, and hopefully, its sacrifices would be worthwhile in the end.

Within minutes, she turned out the lights and climbed beneath the covers of her bed as moonglow streamed through every partition in her curtains and illuminated in pale streaks along carpet and furniture. Perhaps if she had been able to find sleep, then she would have missed it the moment that moonbeams lengthened and shifted their typically undisturbed pattern. Some streams were blotted out by the sudden appearance of a shadow, and she watched its approach with her head upon her pillow and a heart that prayed it wasn't only a dream.

Erik crept to her bedside and halted, staring down at her with longing eyes as he softly said, "I told you how I did this once before. The night of the chandelier fall, I entered this room exactly the same; no one saw me come or go. And I stood in this spot as you slept, and I watched you. You had cuts." His fingertips extended and barely traced the recalled images, one thin line along her brow, one at her jaw, one at her cheek, feather-light, only a hinted touch. "They weren't deep; I knew they'd heal to nothing, and you'd likely forget. But I never would. They showed me the true damage my love could cause. I never touched you that night; I only brushed the air above each mark because I was so sure that if I found skin and learned its gloriousness, I would never be able to stop touching you again. Now I know how right I was." Finally, he permitted resistance to dwindle to nothing and caught her cheek in his palm, marveling over the elation that met him in her gaze. "Dear God, Christine, I'm not living my life without you. Two weeks in the grave. Say my name please; say you love me. Return beats to my heart with your voice and let me have more than the echo of a memory I have had to sustain myself."

"Erik, I love you," she dutifully replied, eagerly sitting up beneath her covers and opening her arms as he caught her in his embrace. Her heart jumped, frantic and thrilled in her chest as she breathed his scent deeply into her lungs, intoxicating herself on him and every substantial detail that she had had to live without.

"I have been lost without you," he declared, pressing a kiss to the crown of her silken head, "and aching so desperately to see you. My head has been torturing me with doubts and denials; it has been adamantly insisting that I created your love, that I fantasized every moment we shared. And I almost believed it; that's why I had to see you as if it was a necessity to survive. I would have considered my fears to be true to spy him kissing you." He tensed against her with the image as it erupted in his memory. "If you had said you loved him back, I think it would have killed the man before you now and left only insanity behind."

"I love _you_, _ange_," she insisted, curling her fingers tightly in the material of his jacket.

"Do you? Do I know it, and is it true? Or has all of this been to keep me from killing the Vicomte?" Even as he muttered the agonizing suspicions of an uncertain mind, he never released her from his arms; not even his suspicious nature was strong enough to deny his heart what it needed so desperately.

Christine drew back enough to meet his eye, and with the touch of a smile upon her lips, she lifted her restless hand to the mask and easily pulled it free to reveal that face she so adored. As her fingers found its distortions and traced them into existence for her own desperate mind, he suddenly leaned close and claimed her lips in a fierce kiss that put an earlier manipulation of the same act out of her mind completely. This was the way this intimacy was supposed to feel, this burning, this consuming suffocation of so many pure emotions at once that it was in its essence, almost terrifying for such a meager contact to hold so much.

One kiss was his only indulgence, but even though he pulled his lips away, she was laying her own kisses to his misshapen cheek, welcoming it back where it was meant to be, as _hers_. "Are you through doubting my devotion?" she asked between caresses and added a long paused hold of a kiss against his contorted upper lip. "How else would you have me prove it to you?"

The provocative implications and ideas conjured in his mind nearly stole rational sense away, and it was with a reluctant groan that he recalled his intentions and sought a modicum of control. "Don't forget that question. I want it answered tomorrow night when all of this unpleasantness in between is over and done, and you are only mine."

"Raoul wants to kill you," she stated somberly with idle grazings of her fingers along his scars.

"I know; I heard from the balcony. And may I argue that just because he wants to doesn't mean that he'll succeed at doing so. He's far too inept to kill me; you above all people should know that frilly, arrogant Vicomtes and incompetent opera managers do not defeat the almighty Opera Ghost. I pity them for trying."

"Erik, please," she bid urgently. "Promise me that you will not attend the performance tomorrow. Please, I don't want anyone to be killed."

"Christine-"

"_Please_," she interrupted before he could finish the protest that was forming. "You don't need to be in Box 5 to hear it, nor do you need to be a face amongst the crowds to receive the accolades you'll deserve for its brilliance. Don't put this upon my shoulders, _ange_. I can't sing and worry over you at the same time."

His palms were running up and down her shoulders and suffering her tremble with her as he insisted, "You truly are afraid, aren't you? My pride would take it as insulting that you doubt my skills at self-preservation, but my heart is too intrigued. I've never had anyone to worry over me before or to love me so much that my demise would matter."

"Please, just promise that you'll stay away."

"Sshh," he crooned gently and stretched out on the mattress beside her, clutching her close against him. "Your only worries should be high notes and keeping character with Piangi, singing your every desire to him as if he were me instead. I expect you to shine tomorrow night, Christine."

Shaking her head fervently as her brow lined in her horror, she accused, "And you intend to be there, don't you? No matter how many in that very theatre will be there in hopes of seeing you dead."

"It would be rude of me not to attend my own premiere," he nonchalantly posed in return.

"Erik-"

"No, no, hush now; go to sleep."

Any refusal she longed to give was silenced as he began to softly hum to her in that beautiful voice she had once called an angel's. Gentle, soothing, golden and rich, it weaved mysteriously about her and encouraged her to relax against him and simply listen to its gloriousness in rapt adoration. Had she ever known any stronger temptation than that heavenly sound? She had committed heart and soul to its first graceful notes all of those months before, and still she would follow anywhere it led her as though it carried salvation in its unearthly existence.

It did not take long as her anxiety eased away for Erik's lullaby to lull her to sleep, and even after he knew she had surrendered, he remained and held her. His heart yearned to bundle her in his arms and carry her home without consideration to anything else, but the end was so close that he felt it would be foolish to spoil it with impulsiveness, not when he had the potential to have both his opera and the woman he loved when all was over and done with…. Of course, that was if he played the situation to his advantage. Yes, and if things went in his favor, then it would be a happy ending indeed.

* * *

Performing on the stage was an inherent trait that was engrained and flowing through Christine's blood. No matter the dark connotations of the current situation, in the instant the opening chords of the overture rang through the full opera house, a thrill raced up her spine and a tingling excitement that carried from heart out to each extremity of every limb. As always, it left her with such an unarguable certainty that the opera was where she was meant to be and singing was what she was born to do. …If only this could be the same as every other production and she could lose herself in her role and not have to worry over her own thoughts and feelings; but the thick lushness of every melody soaring over the heads of the orchestra members and flowing out of every instrument insisted over and over again _whose_ opera this was, and her heart remained attached.

The first two acts went smoothly enough although during her beautiful aria, she could not help but notice the sudden guardedness of the many armed _gendarme_ in attendance, as if her voice in that one brilliant piece would call their expected devil out of hiding. Fortunately, Erik did not appear, and though her composure was shaken, Christine was able to finish the song without folly. Foolish men! She knew without doubt that if Erik were intending something, he would _never_ chance to ruin her perfectly-composed aria; he was a musician first, and she was his protégé to show off at his will.

Act 3 began, and Christine was waiting for her entrance for a passionate duet written to accompany a fantasy; fantasy, no, now reality. She was beaming to consider that every word was hers as she abandoned the wings and played her part, the amorous coquette seeking out the man she desired.

Piangi was supposed to be singing; the awkward silence was her first realization that something was wrong as the strings elongated their chord prompting an entrance that did not come. Her immediate conclusion was that the battle had begun, only she had yet to hear shouts or gunshots; no, nothing but an agitated chord, a flustered conductor mumbling curses beneath his breath, and a continued unrehearsed delay that left her no choice but to fill in the peculiar gap as if it was planned, roaming the detailed stage and toying with random objects, giggling to herself as her character anticipated onward. And she must have been doing well at her impromptu stalling, for she saw no response from the observing Vicomte or the managers sitting in the box with him to insist that they suspected anything.

And then Don Juan raised his voice, and every logical thought evaporated from Christine's head. She knew. She knew it from very timbre of the very first note; maybe even before that, carried on the very aura her partner brought onto the stage. Erik…. Characterization crumbled beneath her. This was their duet, and they were suddenly just Christine and Erik, and he was singing to her of the real passion in his soul.

Explanation and rationale were ignored. She only grinned ever so slightly as she met those mismatched eyes that were devouring her in their stare, and she let herself be as much a willing victim as the audience watching to that ethereal voice, golden and yet laden with a husky desire he could not hide. She consented without reservation and fell beneath his spell.

Desire was a living, breathing thing as it pulsated between them through chords and melody, through voices that joined and weaved together as one being, through hands that granted idle, innocent caresses dripping with a more intent need. It was all combined as a seduction so powerful that Christine was quivering over every bit of her flesh in a desperation for his touch. More, more, and it wasn't enough. There were too many boundaries that they were not allowed to cross, not even a kiss when a mask posed its own intrusion, and she longed to be rid of an audience so that he would be hers alone. Singing with all of the fiery fervency in her body, she sought to tell him that.

It had been a decision in development since he had haphazardly sung this duet with her weeks ago in his home. This was _his_ role, _his_ opera, _his_ fantasy. For so long, his life had consisted of denials and sacrifices; this was the one time he was taking instead of giving up. And the glistening light in Christine's eyes encouraged him further for more random touches and grazed fingertips along skin, for a hand that trailed the length of her throat and made her shiver. And all of this had been conspired in two weeks of loneliness down to the last detail.

Catching her loose curls in his hands, he twined them about his fingers as if it was all still a part of the production, but the demanding look in his eyes was genuine as he softly breathed, "Prove that you love me, Christine."

She hesitated only a moment, caught in the web of his stare so intently that she never gave their audience a thought as her hand slowly raised to his mask. Fitting her fingers about its edge, she carefully lifted it away with never a refusal; no, his gaze provoked her and begged for more. More, and in the midst of horrified gasps that resounded through a shocked theatre, she leaned close and pressed her lips to his misshapen ones, kissing him desperately, too lost to care about anything but him, his love, his lips.

One kiss, and at its essence, there was a choice made and proclaimed, and she was being the strong one to declare it. Pulling away from her eager hold, Erik cast a quick look out over a frantic and horror-stricken audience, applying apathy when shrieks of 'monster' and 'demon' filtered over the crowd. How could such things matter when the woman he loved was his in heart and soul and was claiming him in return without hesitation? He instead focused on the wide-eyed Vicomte, who was waving frenzied commands to the _gendarme_, and he practically posed battle in one fixed stare, a challenge and God help him if he took it.

Turning back to his expectant love, he added a quick kiss to her frowning lips and said, "I love you, Christine."

"Erik, what-" Before she could devise a full question, he was gone in two steps and a leap, escaping through one of his many hidden exits, this one a trap door down into the depths below the stage. "Erik!"

She was contemplating jumping after him, no matter what lay at the bottom to await her. Trap doors and darkness, but she was willing to cross whatever she must to have the desire of her heart. Before the decision could be acted upon, the Vicomte was on a stage full of rushing performers and chaos, and catching her hand in an unbreakable hold, he yanked her behind him into the wings as sounds of pandemonium trailed their exit and shouts to armed guards to pursue the Opera Ghost.

"Let go, Raoul!" she shouted, twisting and fighting against him. But he would not listen, dragging her through crowds and giving her little choice but to stumble after him. "Stop! Where are we going?"

But a handful of feet ahead, and she knew; she would have called him crazy if not for the fact that in some strange way, she understood his reasoning: take her to a place where he had been all that mattered to her. Of course, he was unaware that a scene on a rooftop had been rewritten two weeks before, and that those were the predominant memories blazing in her head as he pulled her up narrow flights of stairs and out into the frigid night atop a fresh layer of snow.

"Raoul, what-"

"We escaped him once by coming here. Up on the rooftop, closer to heaven and as far away from the darkness as we could be. Do you recall it, Christine? It was your idea," Raoul reminded as he abruptly released her in the exact place they'd been once before. "You chose _me_ that night; you begged me to rescue you from _him_."

"No," she somberly corrected, refusing to meet his aghast eyes. "I begged you to give me something safe to love instead. …I was afraid of what I already felt, what I still feel now."

The Vicomte de Chagny was pacing back and forth, making contrasting footsteps through the same few feet of snow, atop and crossing one another like a wanderer on a wayward path without aim. "The way you sang with him and the way you kissed him. …Am I to believe that such things were only just indulged for the first time?" Shaking his head, realization began to emerge as pieces soldered together. "I knew you weren't yourself, but I attributed it to the opera, to the threat in our background. But…you've been avoiding my every embrace for weeks. …Have you been carrying on with that monster this entire time? While you lived under my roof? Wore my ring?"

His pacing had grown stale and left him to face her furiously as she shifted in her only created footfalls marring snow's bed and softly gave reason enough. "I love him, Raoul; I'm sorry."

Even a spoken admission wasn't enough to pierce his anguish as he continued, "But I did all of this for you, to save you from him. I did everything I knew to love you; for six months, I sought to help you move beyond what I thought were traumas on your soul. And now you tell me that this entire time everything you said and did and supposedly felt for me was a lie? …Did you spend the last six months just seeking your way to get back to him? Six months as I loved you and carried on an engagement, and you were never there with me, were you? You were supposed to love me, Christine. I gave everything for you; why wasn't that enough?"

"I'm sorry," was all she could manage to say as silent tears glistened off of moonlight above them and snaked their paths down her cheeks.

"And now," he tightly went on, "you make me a laughingstock before the entire city by that display onstage. I had to watch you practically seduce another man with a room full of people; and that would have been difficult enough had it been all a ploy in the end, but you kissed him and chose him while armed guards were waiting to shoot him to _protect you_."

"I never asked you to kill him," she suddenly declared her most adamant point, forcing dwindling strength not to flee her grasp. "And I can apologize a million times over for hurting you, Raoul, but I _won't_ apologize for loving him."

"Won't you? Even if loving him means destroying me." In a determined step, Raoul halted before her, searching her eyes as he demanded, "Have you no regret for any of this, Christine?"

"Regret? Of course, I regret!" she exclaimed adamantly. "You have no idea how it has torn at me; I have been the cause of so much pain, of _everyone's_ pain. Had I been strong enough from the first day, I wouldn't have run from my heart like a coward. I caused all of this damage, and I broke your heart with my own weakness."

"And what am I to do now?" the Vicomte snapped at her. "Let you go? Let you be with _him_? …No, I can't; I _won't_, not after everything we've meant to each other. You loved me once; I know you did. It couldn't have all been a lie. And you can love me again when we're away from this God-forsaken place."

The horror of his claim was registering in her addled brain, and she stammered nervously, "What do you mean? I'm not going with you, Raoul."

"Yes, you are. An ultimatum laid at your feet for you to decide how many more lives you will destroy." His stare never wavered, and she saw nothing in it of the man who had claimed to love her as he posed his choice, "Leave with me now. We'll marry and start a new life and forget any of this nightmare ever happened; or I will call together the managers, the _gendarme_, a mob of enraged civilians if I must, and we will flood the catacombs through that entrance behind your own dressing room mirror and kill him as we should have done to begin with."

"What?" she gaped, shaking her head desolately. "How can you put such a choice before me? You already know that I love him."

"No, I know that you are confused, that _he_ has made you confused. Do you remember that night we stood on this rooftop, Christine? You begged me to save you and to love you, and I never hesitated. I gave you all that you needed; I was your salvation," he pushed, searching her eyes for an imprint of those same feelings. "I'm not forcing you to leave with me, Christine; I'm not carrying you off like that monster would have done were he in my place. I'm trying to be fair to you."

"Fair? You're manipulating the answer you want. How can that be fair?"

"Perhaps," he conceded, "but if an ultimatum is what it takes to make you see reason in all of this madness, then so be it."

"Ultimatum? Surely you realize, Monsieur Vicomte, that you are in no position to be proposing ultimatums."

Christine could not conceal the relief that lit her features in the instant Erik appeared, but it was limited when his chosen persona was the Opera Ghost as within the moment, the Vicomte had a rope pulled tight about his neck.

"Erik, don't," she warned even as she continued to absorb the uncovered details of his bare face.

"I'm just laying my own ultimatum in place," he justified, tugging the rope a bit to make the Vicomte choke and cough. "Don't worry, _petite_. The choice this time will be his." With all of the arrogance that his reputation deemed him to possess, Erik faced his victim and told him calmly, "You choose, Monsieur. You will either die by my hand momentarily without a qualm from my own sense of regret; or you will leave _alone_. You can tell every last one of them below that you killed the Opera Ghost, play the hero, as you like; I don't much care. But you never come after Christine and me. You leave us in peace. You see, Monsieur, life-altering choices are my specialty; as the notorious phantom, they must be nothing less than stellar. Make a choice quickly before you are out of breath. I'd rather not kill you for Christine's sake, but…accidents happen when you dawdle. Will you leave us be, Monsieur?" he reiterated forcibly.

"Yes, …fine," Raoul rasped against the rope's hold, gasping air in between each utterance, and within the moment, he was dropped to the snow-covered ground, sucking in a necessary breath as the rope gave way.

"Go," Erik urged, watching apathetically as Raoul stumbled back to his feet, and edging closer to Christine, he captured one of her hands securely in his, squeezing lightly to draw her eye.

Glancing between the two of them, Raoul shook his head in disgust, his hands still rubbing at the sore flesh of his throat. "And what would be the point of fighting for her if she doesn't love me anyway? I'm not going to die for someone who won't care in the end. …God help you, Christine," he somberly stated. As he turned to go, Christine called his name, but he never looked back, fleeing rooftops and phantoms and the fickle heart of love.

It was in the very instant that the Vicomte was gone that Erik pulled her in close to his chest, fitfully kissing her brow over and over again, and she had the fleeting thought that perhaps his arrogance toward the Vicomte had been as enacted as her love.

"Did you plan all of that?" she asked in awe as she stroked his face.

"Most of it. You're fortunate that the Vicomte is quite transparent. I knew given the right impetus, this would be where he'd take you. I preferred the idea of facing him alone rather than in a theatre full of armed _gendarme_. What was unexpected was his desire to give his own ultimatum. Threaten my life, and I've little doubt that you would have consented to go with him."

With a reluctant nod, she agreed, "I wouldn't have allowed them to come after you." Glancing to where the Vicomte had vanished, she nervously bid, "Do you believe he'll keep to his word?"

"I gave him compensation, you do realize. I let him be the one to rid the world of the Opera Ghost." Despite his seeming assurance, his grip on her had unconsciously tightened. "However, we leave at dawn. I take no chances now that I've acquired something worth losing." His hand was brushing through her hair possessively, every pore in his body satisfied to have her near, and bending to breathe against her ear, he said, "I adored singing with you tonight. That was the exact image of my fantasies brought to life. Loving you, desiring you, singing with you; it was perfection."

Her cheeks warmed with the memory, and with a shy grin, she bid, "And you intended that all along as well, didn't you? Usurp the leading role and witness your opera firsthand in its very creation?"

"I wanted it performed as I'd seen it in my head, and that was always you and I. It will always only ever be you and I. …Piangi may not have agreed when I locked him in his dressing room with curses on my head shouted in boisterous Italian, but his opinion on the matter is inconsequential." His hands had not stilled against her, moving up and down her back with a constant need to feel her. In a hesitant voice, he asked, "You don't regret your choice, do you, Christine? As I've told you before, this is forever."

She drew back enough to meet his eye, and smiling tenderly, she whispered back, "Regret would have been a life without you. I have no doubt where I belong."

"I love you," he vowed vehemently, leaning near to brush kisses along every feature of her face and whispering in between, "You gave me everything I've ever wanted tonight, and now you give me forever besides. You are an amazement, Christine."

"I love you, Erik," she replied in hushed echoes as his lips found hers, and moonlight streamed over them at every angle and illuminated love. Every luminescent beam sparkled upon a layer of indented snow on the rooftop and created silver that twinkled in reflected stars. It was a portrait of stilled time as frozen as the winter world, and a moment of sheer bliss that would lead to a million more.

The End


End file.
